I modified the title to make it more descriptive
I also think it’s time for the open source and/or fediverse Trakt alternatives to get some love.
The price change is listed as going from $30 a year to $60 a year, and they’re also changing everyone to that price:
Starting May 20, 2025, all VIP renewals will move to a standardized price. This means that any legacy, promotional, or grandfathered pricing will no longer apply to renewals processed on or after that date. Instead, all VIP memberships will renew at the new standard rate going forward.
People are not happy on their forum:
https://forums.trakt.tv/t/upcoming-vip-renewal-pricing-changes/56676
This user poll suggests that around 97% of respondents (at the time of making this post) will not renew
https://forums.trakt.tv/t/poll-will-you-keep-your-vip-membership-at-60/56923
For people outside of the loop,
Trakt has been running since 2010, it got popular because it lets you track and record your watch history with a UI that no one else seems to offer. It connects to Plex and other services so you can scrobble your watches, get notified of new episodes and movies, and has a social layer throughout the site to commune with other users and comment on what you’re watching.
In the past few years, however, there has been one controversy after another.
Trakt abruptly stopping using TVDB for its data due to API costs and now uses TMDB. This created a number of problem with data being mismatched or completely wrong. The leadership of TMDB has a lot of weird ideas about how shows and movies are formatted, splitting episodes into multiple episodes here and merging episodes and entire series together there, or even disqualifying series from being listed over arbitrary technicalities. Trakt blindly follows whatever TMDB does and their admins locked a long-running thread complaining about these issues on their own forums.
Trakt started arbitrarily changing the way the site looks. Including locking the original color scheme behind a paywall, leaving free users a new, gaudy bright purple color scheme that isn’t even complete (random elements of the free site are still the original maroon). The site overall is getting harder to load and uses far more resources than it did just a few years ago. Trakt launched a “lite” version of the site which is not light in size, it’s just the mobile UI for desktop which is just as resource intensive.
Recently, Trakt nerfed crucial features for free users (and even for paid users in certain ways), limiting playlist making and record-keeping to the point where free is almost useless. And the reduction of playlists, which are curated and shared by users on the site, reduces engagement throughout the entire community.
Now this.
The whole company is becoming corporate and as a result been subjected to enshitification.
I am still using it, for now, because I still benefit from the recommendations it gives me based on what I’ve already watched. Once that stops being the case, I’m just going to leave.
I keep text documents of everything I watch. What I enter into Trakt is just a mirror. Trakt does allow all users (including free users) to download their data and just bugger off. So everyone who uses them should go test that feature.
I used it for a while but I don’t think I ever knew it could do those things. I just used it to manually keep track of what I watched. Was more useful in keeping track of movies but I liked TrackSeries.tv better for keeping track of my shows.
Course, I don’t think it can do any of the things you mention either so it’s certainly not a replacement. It is free though. And I’m not aware of any limits on it.
EDIT: I take that back. If you follow a series it will show you when there are new episodes. I do make use of that feature. That’s really been my biggest problem. Knowing when a new season of something comes out.
As I remember things, TVDB is the one with the weird episode splitting and ordering…
What the heck is this thing? Should many of us care?
It tracks watch history and allows you to build lists, in a way that should integrate with other services. How well it does that is questionable
Some people might still be using it out of habit or loyalty, but a $30 price jump might change that
Seems to be some kind of centralized streaming service catalog. Never heard of it before now and no idea why anyone would be willing to pay $30 for it let alone $60.
Ok I used to feel sorry for non-libre streaming software users, but this is now in “one born every minute” territory. Thanks.
I don’t, and I don’t care what they make. I see double in cost, while simultaneously screwing over the founding members who literally funded their company…fuck em. They could make the best heartpacer for all I care. Doubling your cost…get fucked
I’m assuming you mean pacemaker.
I just started self-hosting this: https://github.com/sbondCo/Watcharr
Seems to work decently and integrates with Plex, and the arr stack
Anyone tried Simkl as a replacement?
I use simkl after using Trakt, and I prefer it. I can’t remeber what I liked better about it, I guess just the general ux. Oh and it can track Anime, although that can be a bit wonky.
From quick research, it certainly seems to be the preferred alternative. It’s been around for quite awhile and look to have a legit business model. I also found an open source app that looks decent.
Ooof, I don’t use it enough to justify that price…
double price bump for something like this kinda touch to swallow; was a paying member for 8/9 years too
I really wish the kodi addons would start working with overseer/jellyseer or something similar, it seems to me the tech is there.
There are open source alternatives? Do they handle Plex/Infuse integration? Trakt’s obsessive march toward enshitification has been pretty predictable, but maybe this price hike will be the last straw.
What is trakt do ?
This comment gives a good summary, but in short it lets you track what movies and shows you’ve watched / want to watch
What track what you watch?
Things like this incentivise me to sit down and write an alternative. I just wish I had the time and energy to do so.
Yeah, got the mail yesterday. VIP member for 6 years and immediately cancelled it.
I mean, I am okay with paying for something that I use but double the price just like that? Nope.
