Crackle sounds a little bit too good to be true. Stream free Hollywood films, TV shows, and originals for free?
Yup, free to your mobile device and always will be according to the makers. You can watch movies and premium TV shows from Crackle’s extensive library of iconic and new hits. And it’s all on-demand without a subscription.
Spoiler alert: there are some catches. We will go into these later. This is just a trailer. Hint: you should be prepared to put up with that—a lot.
Meanwhile, you can filter genres to your personal tastes and access them first. The genres include drama, comedy, thriller, action, and fandom. Setting up filters helps you find new hits and all-time classics a lot easier.
You can then stuff your Watch Later list with all your favorites until you have some spare time later.
And if you feel like your viewing is in a rut, you can take advantage of the Crackle team’s handpicked viewing recommendations.
Watch for free with no subscription fees or renewals
New movies added each month
Watch Later feature
Curated Crackle recommendations
Discover new TV shows
Catch up with hit movies and TV shows you may have missed
Compatible with Apple TV
The price of being free is watching adverts—many of them. Be the real catch - and this is a doozy - you can take out a subscription and be subjected to fewer ads. Yes, you read that right. Fewer ads. Not ad-free.
Back on planet Earth, there are no free mid-day meals to be had. Considering how much you could shell out on video streaming services per month - easily north of $70 per month - you could learn to live with some ads. Crackle is free so just hold your nose; having your viewing interrupted occasionally is not a biggie on a cosmic scale. Particularly if your budget won’t stretch to a subscription.
Crackle, which is jointly owned by Sony and Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, is an excellent free option despite some limitations. It offers an adequate library and back catalog of movies and a select collection of TV shows. Crackle is worth it alone for the movie archive, which sometimes even outstrips paid-for alternatives.
It works well on a number of platforms and streams creditably well.
It’s free
Easy to use interface
HD video playback
Downloadable content
The app’s storage payload is very light on both Android and iOS
Reliable streaming
Pretty decent movie collection
Good platform compatibility
Heavy advertising
Not much high-quality TV content
The interface could be better
Buggy
Supports only English, Spanish, and Portuguese
Not available internationally
Crackle is downloadable from Google Play. You will need to stake out just 6.2 MB of storage space and be running Android 4.4 or later.
Even the iOS app’s requirements are frugal at just 79.9 MB, which is small compared to many other apps. The app also requires iOS 10.0 or later or tvOS 9.0 or later.
