A cinephile crowd's taste rather than a quality test, but refreshingly not for sale.
What it's really for A film-logging social network; ratings reflect its cinephile community's taste, and aren't for sale.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its crowd-average film ratings from members, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
- Operating since
- 2011 (15 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It makes money from optional Pro (~$19/yr) and Patron (~$49/yr) subscriptions, third-party ads shown to free users, JustWatch streaming affiliate referrals, and a transactional Video Store for film rentals.
- What they do
- Letterboxd is a social network where members log, rate (five stars, half-star increments) and review films, producing a crowd-sourced community average rating for each title.
- What to watch for
- The score reflects the taste of a self-selected, cinephile-skewing crowd rather than any expert testing or representative sample, so a high or low average tells you what Letterboxd's users felt, not whether a film is objectively good for you.
- Composite score
- 2.90 / 5.00 → grade B-
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- Letterboxd was launched in October 2011 by New Zealand web designers Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow and opened to the public in 2013; it was independently run until September 2023, when Canadian investment firm Tiny acquired a 60% majority stake valuing it at $50-60 million, with the founders staying on to lead it. Source: Wikipedia - Letterboxd →
- Revenue comes from freemium subscriptions (Pro ~$19/yr, Patron ~$49/yr), advertising shown to free users (a Playwire partnership reportedly drove a ~490% rise in ad revenue), JustWatch affiliate referral commissions, and a December 2025 transactional Video Store; the platform 'doesn't monetize by taking cuts from films based on their ratings' and earns from users and studios separately, not from the films it rates. Source: How Does Letterboxd Make Money? Business Model Explained →
- Ratings are a weighted community average rather than a straight mean: only one (most recent) rating per member counts, low-volume titles are weighted down, and Letterboxd applies undisclosed heuristics to detect unusual rating patterns/review bombing, occasionally making manual adjustments to ratings eligibility when a film is targeted by a coordinated campaign. Source: Letterboxd Help - How is the average rating calculated →