ReelStack vs Serializd

Updated 16 August 2026

One question settles this comparison faster than any feature list: do you want other people to see what you watch? Serializd is built on the answer being yes. It is a place to publish reviews, follow friends and argue about a finale. ReelStack is built on the answer being no. There is no profile, no feed and no account, because nothing you log ever leaves your phone.

Disclosure: we make ReelStack. Serializd is very good, it is free with no paid tier of any kind, and it is actively developed by someone who clearly cares about it. If the social side is what you want, this page will tell you to use Serializd, because that is the honest answer.

The short answer

Pick Serializd if you want to write reviews and read other people's, if you rate individual episodes, if you like seeing your stats at the end of the year, or if you would rather not pay anything.

Pick ReelStack if you track films as well as television, if you would rather not make another account, or if your watching is nobody else's business.

Side by side

	ReelStack	Serializd
What it is	A private tracker	A public review community
Platforms	iPhone, iPad	iOS, Android, web
Account	None	Required
Films	Yes	No, television only
Visible to others	Nothing	Profile, reviews and diary by default
Where your library lives	On your device, synced through your own iCloud	On Serializd's servers
Price	Free to 8 titles, then $2.99 once	Free, no paid tier
Reviews and following	No	Yes, the main event
Rating granularity	Whole title	Episode, season or series
Viewing stats	No	Yes, watch time and genre breakdowns
Episode alerts	On the day it airs	Yes, reminders and release dates
Where to watch	Shown per title, with rental only marked	Not the focus

Checked August 2026 against both apps' current App Store listings.

Where Serializd is genuinely better

This is a longer list than we would like, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

The community, which is the entire point. Reviews, follows, and a real conversation about television. We do not have this and we are not building it. If what you miss about TV Time is other people, we are the wrong app.
It is free, with no paid tier at all. Not a free trial or a limited tier. The whole app, at no cost. We charge $2.99 after eight titles.
Episode level ratings. You can rate a single episode, a season or the whole series. ReelStack rates the title as a whole, and tracks your progress by season rather than episode.
Stats. Total watch time, shows completed, genre breakdowns. We do not offer any of that today.
It runs everywhere. iPhone, Android and the web. ReelStack is Apple only.

Where ReelStack is different

Films count too

Serializd is television only, by design. If you also want to keep track of the films you mean to watch, that has to live in a second app. ReelStack holds both in one library, with films and shows sitting side by side in the same watchlist.

Nothing is public, because there is nothing to be public on

There is no sign up, no profile, no username and no follower count. Your library is stored on your device and syncs to your other Apple devices through your own iCloud, which means we never hold it and could not publish it by accident. For some people the social layer is the reason to use a tracker. For others it is the reason they stopped.

Knowing where to watch it

ReelStack shows which service each title is on, and marks the ones that are rental only rather than included with a subscription. That is a different job from reviewing, and it is the job we care about most: not what you thought of it, but whether you can watch it tonight.

You pay us, which tells you what we are

$2.99 once, first eight titles free, no ads and no subscription. That is worth saying plainly for a reason. Serializd is free with no paid tier, and free is genuinely wonderful right up until the bill arrives somewhere else. TV Time was free too, for 25 million people, until its owner decided the community was a cost rather than a business.

To be fair to Serializd, nobody has announced anything of the kind, and an independently run app is a very different situation from a venture-owned one. But it is a question worth asking of any free service holding years of your history, ours included if we were free: who pays for this, and what happens when they stop?

Can you use both

Plenty of people will, and that is a sensible answer rather than a cop out. They do different jobs. Serializd is where you write about what you finished; ReelStack is where you find out that season four starts on Thursday and it is on Apple TV. If you already have a Serializd account you enjoy, keeping it costs nothing.

So which one

Serializd

You want to write and read reviews. You rate episodes individually. You like end of year stats. You want it free. You track television and nothing else.

ReelStack

You track films as well as shows. You do not want an account or a profile. You want to be told when the next episode airs and which service has it, privately, on Apple devices.

Get ReelStack on the App Store

Available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

Also worth reading: ReelStack vs Simkl, ReelStack vs Trakt, and the wider field in TV Time alternatives for iPhone.