I want to give a peak behind the scenes and offer additional info related to the recent changes. Trakt is a small business, and we make decisions to help grow Trakt and remain sustainable for the long haul. Trakt has been around for 15 years and we want it to exist another 15+.
Trakt does not sell user data!
Trakt’s revenue is all from VIP memberships. I’ve seen a big misconception saying we sell user data. We don’t and its listed right up top in our privacy policy and I added this to the VIP page too. Many similar sites do in fact sell your user data and build their entire product around it. At Trakt, you are not the product.
We don’t have 3rd party ads
As of several months ago, we don’t serve any 3rd party ads and therefore have no ad revenue. The ad units you see on the website and mobile apps are in house ads, typically for Trakt VIP. 3rd party ads really suck and we determined the overall Trakt experience was more important than ad revenue.
Trakt team
We currently have 10 full time and 2 part employees. VIP revenue pays our salaries and also the server costs. The infrastructure cost required to run Trakt is quite large.
Your data is yours
I’ve also seen many mentions that we don’t allow your data to be downloaded, which isn’t true. The free Trakt API has always been available to get all of your data. There are also many 3rd party tools built on top of the Trakt API to help with this. VIPs get the extra convenience of automatic backups, CSV exports, and RSS feeds. GDPR requests are handled through support and we send you a zip with JSON files for all data in your account.
I added a new Data Export option, which is available starting today for all members. This is essentially a self service GDPR request. You can request your export every 7 days, and we’ll automatically email you the zip file. We limit the frequency since it takes some server effort to produce this export.
List limits
I will admit the initial announcement was too focused on the new free features while downplaying the limits too much. When making the decision to lower the limits, we ran the percentages and also sent out an email in December to test our theories. Here are some numbers based on our active members:
- 2.9% have a list with > 100 items
- 5.8% have a watchlist with > 100 items
- 5.8% have > 2 lists
Other notes
Here are a few other notes for common comments I’ve been seeing.
- There have been list limits in place since 2022, free users did not have unlimited items or lists.
- VIP pricing plans were changed in September 2024.
- Trakt is a healthy company and does not have a revenue problem.
- Additional regional pricing does indeed make sense.
Moving forward
After taking in the feedback, there are some good ideas in the forum and reddit comments that deserve a deeper dive. We will explore some these as we plan future updates. For example, expanding our regional pricing beyond India and Brazil to be more global makes a lot of sense. Figuring out something for the popular, free lists makes sense. We know the list limits suck for some of you, but we’re trying to normalize our features with all of the above in mind.