Netflix and Amazon Prime Video might be home to hundreds of popular shows and movies, but what if we told you there’s a way to stream critically acclaimed content for free?
For the low, low price of absolutely nothing, you can access thousands of incredible dramas, comedies, and documentaries using the free streaming service Kanopy.
The catch? You do need a library card to sign up, but as Arthur taught a generation of kids, ‘having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.’
In all seriousness, Kanopy is home to a range of hugely popular shows to sink your teeth into, including black comedy anthology Inside No 9, hit crime drama Happy Valley, and political comedy The Thick of It.
Olivia Humphrey, CEO and founder of Kanopy, previously called the streaming service ‘the Netflix of education’, explaining that she started the business in 2008 to ‘[encourage] students to engage with video’ and ‘[change] the way academics are teaching and the way students are learning’.
Since then, it’s grown to become a thrifty TV lover’s dream, boasting 30,000 titles.
The service’s film offering is particularly impressive, with classic cinema, independent films, documentaries and more.
Recent big releases available include movie musical Wicked, Oscar Best Picture winner Anora and the latest Bridget Jones film, Mad About the Boy.
There’s also classic favourites like 13 Going on 30 and Clueless, as well as plenty of under-the-radar gems such as Universal Language, a surreal comedy that received rave reviews at Cannes Film Festival last year.
For TV, there’s a huge collection of popular BBC Studios titles to binge.
This includes comedies like This Country and Here We Go, period dramas Pride & Prejudice, Emma and Sense & Sensibility, the crime dramas Sherwood and Death in Paradise, as well as the critically acclaimed Boiling Point, starring Stephen Graham, and the much-loved Call the Midwife.
How to use Kanopy
Kanopy is only available through libraries, and you need to be a member of a participating one to watch. If that’s the case, you can sign up by visiting kanopy.com and entering your library card number.
Users can also sign up with a valid university login.
To find out if your library has made Kanopy available, visit the map here. To find out which universities use Kanopy, search for it here.
Kanopy doesn’t charge its users, because the public library or university covers all costs.
This means that, unlike with other free streaming services, Kanopy users can watch without any adverts.
More free streaming services
- Tubi – Probably the best-known free streamer, Tubi boasts 97 million monthly users and is known for its selection of horror and thriller titles.
- Pluto TV – Operated by Paramount, Pluto offers over 150 live channels in the UK and over 1,000 TV shows and movies to stream.
- Plex – This service allows users to store their own video files and organise them into a library, but it also offers free-to-stream live TV channels.
There is a catch, however. Kanopy users will be supplied with a set number of ‘tickets’ per month by their library, meaning there’s a limited number of shows and movies they can watch.
The Kanopy website explains that tickets reset on the first day of the month, and unused tickets won’t roll over to the next month.
Different titles require different numbers of tickets to watch, but some titles require zero tickets and can be watched an unlimited number of times.
Users can find these by using the ‘0 tickets’ search filter.
Kanopy reviews
TV fans have heaped praise on the service, with one Reddit user sharing: ‘Kanopy is the greatest free resource for any film lover’, to which another replied ‘Kanopy is an incredible resource. My library offers eight movies a month and usually has a pretty good rotating selection.’
And one user said: ‘Kanopy has a wild library of godsend titles, a very underrated streaming service.’
Meanwhile, PC Mag’s 2023 review of Kanopy gave it an ‘excellent’ 4.5 out of five star rating, describing it as ‘a top-tier streaming video service that offers a wealth of independent, ad-free educational and entertainment content.’
So what are you waiting for? Grab your library card and get on Kanopy now.
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