Stremio
Hacker ApprovedRanked 10 of 38 music players by recommenders
Free app that gathers streaming catalogs into one place and plays high-quality video; critics say plugin outages and poor results without a debrid service are common.
Free app that gathers streaming catalogs into one place and plays high-quality video; critics say plugin outages and poor results without a debrid service are common.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 23
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: 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 carries the badge
- 23 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 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
Free catalogs without subscriptions
“It works great with a nice stremio setup for live streaming. No subscriptions necessary anymore.”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After the Raid” “things like stremio give you the catalogs of all streaming services for free”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Discret 11, the French TV encryption of the 80s” High-quality video, including 4K
“Highest quality available for every media. Bluray remuxes are a game changer, when available.”
Comment from 27 Jun 2026 in “Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California” “has had everything I've tried to watch in high bitrate 4k”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “The Self-Cancelling Subscription” Runs on many devices
“I've achieved comparable results on my Android TV with Stremio”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: CineCLI – Browse and torrent movies directly from your terminal” “Install apps such as Plex, Stremio, etc. without hassle.”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “Fox to Buy Roku Streaming Service in $22B Deal” “I recommended Stremio to a friend on an iPhone”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'” Feels like Netflix or Spotify
“This is my preferred option—this is the Spotify of movies and TV.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions” “provides basically an identical experience to Netflix”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Often a poor experience
“Stremio without Debrid (or equivalent) is kind of a terrible experience most of the time.”
Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “What I self-host” “I tried it once and it barely worked at all.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “What I self-host”
Other music players people recommend
The four most recommended other music players, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VLC media player | 172 | 83 | 67% | 12 | 20 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| mpv media player | 82 | 12 | 87% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Infuse video player | 78 | 11 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Kodi | 64 | 38 | 63% | 12 | 15 yrs3 owners | — |
| StremioThis page | 23 | 4 | 85% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
26 of the 31 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“how good illegal alternatives like Stremio are”
“Stremio (which has been down the hill for quite some time)”
“I tried it once and it barely worked at all.”
“Stremio without Debrid (or equivalent) is kind of a terrible experience most of the time.”
“even better, the entire arr stack can be replaced with stremio to just keep everything on-demand”
“I just use stremio with real debrid”
“Stremio and other apps like Fusion have gone up and been (reasonably quickly) taken down off the App Store though.”
“Stremio+TorBox are the two words.”
“Highest quality available for every media. Bluray remuxes are a game changer, when available.”
“Install apps such as Plex, Stremio, etc. without hassle.”
“a feature I was already able to build for the Stremio desktop player”
“Stremio is a good place to do this. I of course use it to watch freely and legaly available science and craft videos”
“It works great with a nice stremio setup for live streaming. No subscriptions necessary anymore.”
“I use Stremio with pirate bay torrents.”
“things like stremio give you the catalogs of all streaming services for free”
“This is my preferred option—this is the Spotify of movies and TV.”
“you can just install streamio and pirate any movie/tv show you like”
“has had everything I've tried to watch in high bitrate 4k”
“It’s 2 clicks with tools like Stremio.”
“I recommended Stremio to a friend on an iPhone”
“I prefer offline watching for zero buffering issues and no wait”
“the smoothness of a stremio + debrid setup feels pretty close to magic”
“after a bunch of random stremio plugin outages”
“I've achieved comparable results on my Android TV with Stremio”
“Streaming torrents is cool.”
“provides basically an identical experience to Netflix”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.