Kanopy vs Hoopla: free films with your library card, explained

JustWatch counts 15,147 films on Kanopy in the US. That is the whole catalogue, and your library licenses a slice of it, so the first thing to know is that two people with Kanopy can see different films.

You get a set number of tickets each month. Your library picks the number, they reset on the first of the month, and any you do not use are gone. They do not roll over.

Each title shows its cost before you press play, and what that comes to varies by library. One Redditor quoted above gets 30 tickets a month, with films costing 2 to 4 each.

Series work differently. A season costs tickets once, then stays open for a while based on its length: three days for a season under four hours, five days for four to ten hours, seven days for anything longer.

Two things cost nothing at all. Titles marked “unlimited viewing” use no tickets, and everything in Kanopy Kids is unlimited. If you have children, that part alone is worth the sign-up.

The catalogue leans towards what libraries like to buy: world cinema, classics, documentaries and The Great Courses lectures. There are no ads.

Hoopla counts borrows instead of tickets. Your library sets how many you get a month, usually somewhere between 6 and 10. San Francisco Public Library is generous at 30 Instant borrows plus 10 Flex borrows. The count resets on the first of the month.

A borrowed film or TV episode is yours for 72 hours, or 48 for some publishers. Then it returns itself.

The two kinds of borrow matter. Instant titles, marked with a lightning bolt, never have a waiting list: everyone can borrow the same film at once. Flex titles, marked with circling arrows, work like a library book, one copy at a time, so you can end up waiting.

Then there is BingePass. One borrow opens a whole collection for seven days, such as The Great Courses or a set of Hallmark films. If you were going to binge anyway, it is the best value in the app.

Hoopla is also more than films. The same borrows cover ebooks, audiobooks, comics and music, so a heavy reader can use up the month before watching anything. Its films skew more mainstream than Kanopy's, with plenty of TV.

Neither is a flat subscription for your library. Kanopy charges a licence fee whenever someone watches a film for 30 seconds or more, and Hoopla charges per borrow. Every film you watch costs your library money.

That is where the monthly limits come from, and it is why some libraries drop the service. New York, Brooklyn and Queens public libraries all left Kanopy in 2019, citing costs they could not predict. One of the Redditors above says the same happened to his.

So if your library has neither, look one library over. Some give free cards to anyone living in the state or province, and some sell cards to non-residents for a yearly fee. Kanopy lets you add more than one library to the same account, and each brings its own tickets.

Not on its own. A VPN changes where you appear to be. It does not give you a library card, and the card is what both services check.

The films are also licensed country by country. Kanopy's own help pages say a playback error “typically means the video you're trying to play isn't available in your country,” and that if you are using a VPN, turning it off may fix it. Hoopla only operates in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The honest route is a card from a library that will give you one, used in the country it serves. Streaming services generally do not allow a VPN to get round regional licensing, and they look for them. There is more on why catalogues differ by country in our guide to streaming by country.

The apps are built for browsing their own collections. To ask “what is on Kanopy from the 1970s rated over 7 on IMDb”, use JustWatch instead.

JustWatch has a page for Kanopy in the US and for Hoopla in the US, Canada and Australia. Each one filters by release year, genre and IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes score, and you can change the sort order. It is free and needs no account.

“I hopped on JustWatch and saw that you can buy it and rent it from Apple and Amazon but there’s a really cool app called Kanopy that is a free app provided by the public library, so basically you get the movies for free, as long as you sign up through the library for this app.” Seuss_Pantaloons, r/Cinema

Two catches. JustWatch shows the whole catalogue, and your library may not license every title, so check the film in the app before you plan your evening around it. And JustWatch does not track Kanopy outside the US, so in Canada or the UK you browse Kanopy itself.

Watchlist Boosted works the same way from the other end. (Disclosure: I run it.) Save the films you want there and the Free filter shows which of them are on Kanopy, Hoopla or a free service in your country, with a button to each. Tick your library's service under My services and those titles count as yours in Can watch now and the streaming email too. It uses JustWatch's data, so it has the same gaps: Kanopy in the US only, Hoopla in the US, Canada and Australia.

Libby is for books. It is OverDrive's app for ebooks and audiobooks, and popular titles have waiting lists because your library buys a set number of copies. OverDrive also owns Kanopy, so for films, Libby's sister app is Kanopy.

Hoopla does books and films in one app, and its Instant titles never have a wait. Plenty of people use both: Libby for the new bestseller, Hoopla for the comic or the film. For free films without a library card at all, see the free streaming apps.