Letterboxd
The most recommended of 5 movie databases
Recommended for logging, reviewing and rating films with smooth lists and watchlists. Critics fear a studio-linked sale and a cluttered review feed.
Recommended for logging, reviewing and rating films with smooth lists and watchlists. Critics fear a studio-linked sale and a cluttered review feed.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Watchlists and lists with filters
“I like how they implement it. I can filter a list of movies per streaming service.”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Which streaming service was that on again” “Letterboxd (among others) will give you a somewhat more clunky unified watchlist”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Which streaming service was that on again” “worth noting that letterboxd will track progress on these and similar lists”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films” - Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “1300 Still Images from the Animated Films of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli (2023)”
Charming, thoughtful reviewer community
“part of the charm of letterboxd is that its median reviewer is far more woke than every NYT contributor combined”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” “they avoid the overwriting problem that even the more thoughtful Letterboxd users are prone to”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “The Rise and (Potential) Fall of Letterboxd” Smooth, polished, well-liked overall
“especially compared to how smooth Letterboxd feels”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 on Hacker News “this big and this good (it's terrific)”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” Inspiration for similar sites
“a letterboxd-like lookup for books would have similar regularly-occurring debates”
Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “The Perils of ISBN” “Letterboxd was a big inspiration.”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Flipper – an album-first library for music streaming”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Login problems and poor layout
“I can't log into Letterboxd or whatever”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare Turnstile solver library (no headless browser required)” “Letterboxd layout is the worst.”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” “I really dislike Letterboxd”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code” Studio ownership and rating manipulation
“Having such a high profile film rating site be potentially owned by a film studio has serious conflict of interest issues.”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” “They don't show pre-screening ratings anymore, amassing the cheater ratings then to the public on the Premiere day.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” “There are dozens of people giving only 5 stars to a certain companies films.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” Review feed buried in jokes
“you need to scroll through so many jokes before you find an actual insightful review”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?” “you have to wade through a mountain of terrible one-liners from wannabe comedians”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “The Rise and (Potential) Fall of Letterboxd” Fears of decline after sale
“Can't wait for the enshittification of Letterboxd.”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding” “Going the same way as Rotten Tomatoes.”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Netflix reportedly among parties in talks to buy Letterboxd”
Other movie databases people recommend
The four most recommended other movie databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LetterboxdThis page | 16 | 14 | 53% | 8 | — | — |
| Criterion Closet | 13 | 5 | 72% | 1 | — | — |
| JustWatch | 11 | 3 | 79% | 5 | — | Approved |
| IMDb | 6 | 34 | 15% | 5 | — | — |
| CineCLI | 6 | 4 | 60% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
28 of the 31 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I can't log into Letterboxd or whatever”
“Letterboxd was a big inspiration.”
“They don't show pre-screening ratings anymore, amassing the cheater ratings then to the public on the Premiere day.”
“There are dozens of people giving only 5 stars to a certain companies films.”
“this big and this good (it's terrific)”
“part of the charm of letterboxd is that its median reviewer is far more woke than every NYT contributor combined”
“Letterboxd layout is the worst.”
“Having such a high profile film rating site be potentially owned by a film studio has serious conflict of interest issues.”
“So Imdb 2.0 has become Imdb 2.0.”
“Can't wait for the enshittification of Letterboxd.”
“I like how they implement it. I can filter a list of movies per streaming service.”
“Letterboxd (among others) will give you a somewhat more clunky unified watchlist”
“Going the same way as Rotten Tomatoes.”
“great website but i had to sign out of at least three separate newsletters”
“they avoid the overwriting problem that even the more thoughtful Letterboxd users are prone to”
“you have to wade through a mountain of terrible one-liners from wannabe comedians”
“There's not much Letterboxd does that cannot be federated.”
“couldn't find the perfect app for my needs”
“especially compared to how smooth Letterboxd feels”
“a letterboxd-like lookup for books would have similar regularly-occurring debates”
“worth noting that letterboxd will track progress on these and similar lists”
“Nearly all the things they complain about in this post are things that I like about Letterboxd”
“I really dislike Letterboxd”
“The order as presented in letterboxd is pretty spot on.”
“I'm still waiting for Letterboxd to introduce a feature to give me personalized film recs”
“neither Goodreads, IMDB nor Letterboxd have proper export APIs”
“you need to scroll through so many jokes before you find an actual insightful review”
“each view is its own page”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.