Updated 16 August 2026
These two apps solve the same problem in almost opposite ways. Simkl is a free service with an account, a website, and your library on its servers. ReelStack is a paid iPhone app with no account, no website, and your library on your phone. Neither approach is the right one in general. They are right for different people, and the differences are easy to describe.
Disclosure: we make ReelStack. Simkl is a good product with a genuinely generous free tier, and there are several things it does that we do not do at all. Those are listed below, in their own section, before we get to ours.
Pick Simkl if you watch anime, if you use Android or a desktop browser as well as an iPhone, if you are migrating a TV Time archive, or if you would rather not pay anything.
Pick ReelStack if you only watch on Apple devices, you do not want another account, and what you mostly want is to be told when the next episode of the thing you are watching is on.
| ReelStack | Simkl | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad | iOS, Android, web |
| Account | None | Required |
| Where your library lives | On your device, synced through your own iCloud | On Simkl's servers |
| Price | Free to 8 titles, then $2.99 once | Free with ads; VIP from $2.99 per month |
| Ads | None, ever | On the free tier |
| Export your library | Free, CSV | Paid tiers, or 20 days of use per month |
| Episode alerts | On the day it airs | Configurable, including before airing |
| Statuses | Watchlist, Watching, Watched | Adds On Hold and Dropped |
| Anime | Only what TMDB lists as a show | First class, with MyAnimeList sync on VIP |
| Custom lists | No | Paid tiers |
| TV Time import | No | Yes, direct |
| Where to watch | Shown per title, with rental only marked | Tracked automatically |
US pricing, August 2026. Simkl also offers a student discount and a one time lifetime option.
Worth being blunt about this, because for a lot of people it settles the question before anything else does.
Not better in general. Different in ways that matter to a specific person.
You open the app and start adding shows. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to verify, no password. Your library is stored on your device and syncs to your other Apple devices through your own iCloud account, which means we never hold it and could not read it if we wanted to. The practical consequence is that there is no company between you and your data whose business plans can change.
$2.99, one time, for the whole app. The first eight titles are free so you can decide whether you like it before paying anything. There is no subscription, no upgrade tier, and no ads on any tier.
This is the difference we would point at first. On Simkl, backups and exports sit behind PRO or VIP, or behind using the service at least twenty days a month. On ReelStack, export is free for everyone and always has been. The paid feature is the importer, which brings a library in.
That is deliberate. An app that makes it easy to move in and charges you to move out has its incentives pointed the wrong way, and after what happened to 25 million TV Time users in July, an exit you have to pay for is not much of an exit.
ReelStack schedules a notification for the day an episode of a show you are watching actually airs, and it does that on your phone rather than on a server. Shows waiting on you get gathered into one screen grouped by day, so the question "what is on tonight" has a single answer.
In fairness, Simkl's notifications are more configurable than ours. You can ask it to warn you an hour before, five minutes before, or after an episode has aired, and it can push your schedule into iCal or Google Calendar on the VIP tier. If you want that level of control, Simkl gives you more knobs.
Most Simkl users pay nothing and see ads, which is a perfectly reasonable trade. But if you want the ad free experience and your data backed up, VIP starts at $2.99 a month, which is around $36 a year, or roughly $108 over three years. ReelStack is $2.99 in total over the same period, and a lifetime Simkl option exists if you would rather not do the arithmetic either.
The point is not that one number is smaller. It is that they are different business models, and the model tells you what the app will become. A subscription has to keep justifying itself every month, which is why free tiers get tighter over time. A one time purchase has to be worth buying once, which is why our features get added instead of gated.
You watch anime. You use more than one kind of device. You have a TV Time archive to rescue. You want detailed control over when notifications arrive. You would rather see ads than pay.
You watch on an iPhone or iPad and nothing else. You are tired of making accounts for things that do not need them. You want to know when the next episode lands and where to watch it, without a feed, a profile or a follower count.
Get ReelStack on the App Store
Available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
If you are still deciding, the wider list of options is in TV Time alternatives for iPhone, which covers Trakt, Serializd and the rest alongside these two.