Crackle is a video streaming service founded in 2004. In 2006, the streamer was bought by Sony Pictures and later sold to Chicken Soup for the Soul in 2019. It is one of the few free streaming apps that are 100% legitimate and gives its users unlimited streaming to licensed movies and television programs.
Crackle is easy to download on mobile and can also be viewed through your browser – no download is required.
Content
Sony Picture’s Crackle has some significant content, though it lags behind two of our favorites, Pluto and Tubi.
To put a finer point on it, the site’s selection is geared more towards older content and foreign films, think the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. If ME.tv had its own streaming service, it may look something like this – though Crackle has much more content than ME.tv overall.
Feeling nostalgic? Check out the first season of Alf, yes, that Alf (1986). Horror fan? Cult classic B-movies are endless.
Here’s a short list of what is available on Crackle today.
Television
- The Abbott and Costello Show
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- Alf
- Baby Einstein
- Bear Grylls Survival School
- The Beverly Hillbillies
- Bonanza
- Car 54, Where Are you?
- The Carol Burnett Show
- Charlie’s Angels
- The Dick Van Dyke Show
- Dilbert
- Dragnet
- Flash Gordon
- Forensic Files
- Geraldo Rivera’s Murder in the Family
- Greatest Tank Battles
- The Grown Ups
- Highway to Heaven
- Kitchen Nightmares (Gordon Ramsey)
- The Lone Ranger
- Merlin
- The Michael J. Fox Show
- MST3K Shorts
- Pan Am
- The Real Ghostbusters
- Real Husbands of Hollywood
- The Rifleman
- Sherlock
- Starsky and Hutch
Movies
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- All the King’s Men
- American Loser
- Ancient Aliens and the New World Order
- The Bill Murray Experience
- Bloodfist
- Centurion
- Crocodile
- Elephant White
- Enemy
- Frankenfish
- Girl in the Woods
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
- The Girl Who Played with Fire
- The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo
- Gremlin
- Heavy Metal
- IP Man (1 – 4)
- JFK: A President Betrayed
- Jurassic Shark
- King of Devil’s Island (if you haven’t seen this yet, this film alone is worth a trip to Crackle – it may be one of our favorite foreign films ever, after Downfall)
- Lake Placid 2, 3, and 4
- Lock and Key
- Manson
- Midnight Express (1978)
- The Nines
- Ninja
- Rampart
- Return to the Blue Lagoon
- Starship Troopers 2 and 3
- Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
- War, Inc.
Bonus: There’s a ton of content dedicated to Princess Diana in the movies section for her fans, and amateur bible historians will be thrilled with the number of documentaries they’ve probably never heard of available on the site.
In regard to content, Crackle is a great place to discover new films and shows that most viewers aren’t familiar with from actors like Ethan Hawke, Kevin Bacon, Djimon Hounsou, and more. Love older Godzilla movies? Crackle has 6 of them – we didn’t know there were that many!
But in terms of expectations, this is a film lovers’ paradise, not a database of the latest hits. Think deep tracks on an album, not the tunes you hear every day on the radio.
Is Cackle free?
The best thing about Crackle is that it is 100% Free. There are no hidden costs or subscription fees.
Using Crackle is fairly simple. As the app opens, you’ll get a landing page that displays the featured content, and from here you can filter and search for titles that may be interesting to you. However, given Crackle’s limited selection, we’d advise you to browse the list of available titles vs. searching first – this is a discovery type of service, not a search-and-find repository – there is a fairly good chance you may not find exactly what you were looking for.
But that isn’t a bad thing, there is so much to explore here.
Crackle may not have the latest movies and shows, or even popular titles from the last decade, but at the end of the day, this isn’t the demo Crackle is after, and we appreciate the work they’ve done to curate a fun and readily accessible collection of free and enjoyable titles.
And while you are not required to sign in, creating an account will give you the option to create playlists and receive notifications for genres that are interesting to you.
Most notable con: Picture quality isn’t always available in HD.
Is Crackle safe?
Yes. Crackle is completely safe and legal to use. The site sees approximately a quarter million viewers each month and is VPN compatible for geo-restricted (international) viewers.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, Crackle doesn’t have the kind of selection like that of more established streamers, but if you’re a film-lover, Crackle is definitely worth checking out.
And it’s another tool in your toolbox to escape subscription hell. 🙂