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# Streaming Sites

# Popular Streaming Sites

  • gogoanime - Self-hosted site that nearly all scraper sites source from.
  • 9anime - Self-hosted site with a library on par with gogoanime. Marginally better quality while updating their releases to more often include fansubs and BD versions on older content.
  • Zoro - Self-hosted site similar in quality to 9anime with an extensive library and is one of the only streaming sites with soft subtitles.

# Picking a Streaming Site

While one can choose between the numerous popular sites listed both here and on The Index, the best way to pick a streaming site is to choose one that suits your needs, whatever those may be. These are some factors that may affect your choice.

# Scrapers vs Self-Hosted Sites

A "scraper" is a site that takes content hosted on other sites, and puts it on their own. These are the streaming site equivalent to manga aggregator sites that are mentioned in the literature page. These can lead to extensive libraries without the need for the site owners to host the content themselves, usually at the expense of video quality. By far the most commonly scraped from site is gogoanime, so much so that most streaming sites in existence are gogoanime scrapers.

Examples of scraper sites: AllAnime, 11anime, 5anime, Genoanime, Animeflix

A "self-hosted" site is one that actually hosts all the content on their own servers. With some exceptions, this usually means a significantly smaller selection than all the scraper sites who can utilize gogo's massive library. However, this usually also leads to better video quality that can range from a marginal improvement, to extremely significant.

Examples of self-hosted sites: gogoanime, 9anime, Zoro, animepahe, Marin

# Video Quality

While streaming sites offer the worst video quality in comparison to the alternatives such as torrenting, DDL, or XDCC, that does not mean that all streaming sites are made equal. If for whatever reason those other methods are not open to you but you'd still like to improve the video quality of your media, then you have some options available to you.

Some comparisons between streaming sites:

# Quality Tier List

Tier 1:

  • Marin - Contains the smallest library of all the sites but with the best quality for BD releases and good quality for seasonal content. Consistently the best overall
  • AllAnime - Specific seasonal content belongs in Tier 1 because it is equal to SubsPlease/HorribleSubs releases making it the undisputed best quality for illegal streaming sites in these instances. Not all series are scraped from VRV though and in those instances the quality is Tier 3.
  • AnimeDao - Same as above but it depends on which server you choose. Try them out and pick the one with good quality.

Tier 2:

Tier 3:

  • gogoanime (and scrapers)
  • animepahe - Can be better or worse than gogoanime but with significantly smaller file size and the benefit of sourcing from good BD releases when available, like Marin.

# Other Factors

There are a multitude of other factors that may affect your decision in picking a site. Here are some brief recommendations based on some factors that aren't covered in The Index and are often not taken into account.

Fansubs and BD Versions

  • Marin and animepahe are very consistent at picking good BD releases with good fansubs. 9anime also does this but less often and often with slightly worse release choice.

Filesize

UI

  • Streaming site users often care about the UI and user experience. This is completely subjective, and the best advice we have is to try out the sites from The Index yourself and find what you like.

Library

  • gogoanime (and its scrapers) and 9anime have some of the largest libraries available.

Soft Subs

  • Zoro is one of the only streaming sites with soft subtitles with the only other real alternatives being legal streaming sites.

Other factors like the ability to download, commments, MAL-Sync, and more can be identified in The Index