Ranking of Anime and Manga Tracking Websites with Pros and Cons

If you have watched a decent amount of anime, you know that you will not finish every anime. Some you never want to touch again, some you just don’t have time for now but want to watch later.
And your watched anime list just keeps getting larger. What about the anime you are planning to watch?

A solution for this problem has existed for a long time: Anime and Manga tracking websites. You can track the number of watched episodes/chapters, completed series, paused series, dropped series, and those you want to watch.

Now there are 3 major websites/platform - MyAnimeList, AniList, Anime-Planet, and also Kitsu.

This information is also helpful if you’re searching for MAL alternatives, AniList alternatives, or Anime-Planet alternatives.

These platforms are not just for tracking but also for discovering new anime and they have large communities.
They tends to have different lists, recommendations, ratings, reviews and rankings. Many people use multiple platforms at the same time, and the platform supports exporting and importing list
(use one primarily and occasionally import list from it to others)

This is not exactly a ranking, but I will tell the pros and cons of each one so you can decide which one you will prefer.

MyAnimeList (MAL):

MAL is almost like IMDB, and people use MAL links to specify which anime or manga they are talking about. Many other platforms use its ratings.

Pros:

1. 1. Most popular/larger community
2. 2. Considered and used as the main database
3. 3. Opening/ending themes listed

Cons:

1. 1. Design is not modern and sometimes feels old school, inefficient
2. 2. No tags, just genres

AniList:

Pros:

1. 1. Most modern and efficient interface/design
2. 2. Descriptive tags (also helpful in searching because you can enable and block specific tags)

Cons:

1. 1. Doesn’t show the total number of episodes or chapters for anime/manga directly.
   (You can see the total number in your list - Planning, Waching/Reading, Completed, etc.)
2. 2. Others have lists like trending, popular this season on the home page.
   AniList has those lists, but when logged in, they disappear from the home. (available in ‘browse’)

Anime-Planet:

Pros:

1. 1. It includes manga or anime-style works originally written in English or other languages.
2. 2. Knows the currently released chapters even for manhwa and manhua
   (MAL, AniList don’t know the total number of chapters for some manhwa and manhua)
3. 3. Tags

Cons:

1. 1. Sperate search for manga and anime when
   (You might search and find no results, and then remember that you searched in anime while you meant to search for manga.)
2. 2. Unlike MAL and AniList, Anime-Planet has no export option for list (it does have import option)
3. 3. No streaming platforms listed

If you’re trying to export a list from Anime-Planet, I found this website/tool is most helpful: malscraper.azurewebsites.net

Kitsu:

Kitsu is not as popular as the other three but is a nice alternative if you don’t like any of the others.

Now, I haven’t mentioned many features or the different lists present for each of them, but I did try to cover their main differences and turn-offs.

When deciding which one to use, the main point is interface, so try each one and decide which one suits you better. (You can try them without making account)
These four are the most popular and have a good interface.