It’s safe to say that streaming services are way beyond frustrating at this point. The promise of having countless movies and TV shows at your fingertips has been steadily outweighed by constant price increases and titles you love being pulled at a moment’s notice. Just this week Netflix announced another price hike, and that’s on the heels of the big Disney+/Hulu increase from the end of last year. Getting quality entertainment has become expensive, especially if you want to avoid ads (though the ad-supported likes of Tubi and Pluto TV are great alternatives).
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Fortunately, there’s a good service out there with an incredible film library that doesn’t cost a cent. It also doesn’t have ads breaking up the movies. While it may sound too good to be true, I promise this is a real service. It’s called Kanopy.
Kanopy, from the company Overdrive, is a service that actually partners with public libraries around the country to bring cinema to everyone, free of charge. The only “catch” to using it is that you need to sign up for a library card, provided your local library is enrolled (most major public library systems are).
Once you sign up for Kanopy, everything is free to check out. You get a number of “tickets” added to your account, and that number resets each month. For example, I get 30 tickets a month to watch movies or shows on Kanopy. A regular film rental usually costs two tickets, though every now and then a really popular title will cost four. Like an on-demand rental, I’ll have that movie available to me for 48-72 hours after checking it out. This part changes from library to library. You might get more tickets or the cost of titles might be different, but it’s the same system.
That’s it. That’s Kanopy in a nutshell. It’s completely free, very easy to use, and it supports public libraries. Not to mention it’s got a great lineup of films and shows from all decades, genres, and parts of the world.

Kanopy has several popular films from A24 and Neon, as well as some classic Hollywood entries and acclaimed documentaries. There’s a goal with this library to educate through film, so there’s a lot to explore, but there are also tons of movies you’re already familiar with.
Here’s a list of just a few titles currently available on Kanopy, that’ll hopefully show you just how varied its lineup really is: Point Break, Punch-Drunk Love, Gladiator, Drive, The Third Man, Oldboy, Hundreds of Beavers, Titanic, Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall, the original Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Apartment, Train to Busan, Eraserhead, Wayne’s World, Ella Enchanted, His Girl Friday, Some Like It Hot, and so many more.
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Kanopy also has a loaded roster of British TV shows from the BBC that can be harder to find other places here in the States. And like other streaming service, Kanopy is adding and dropping titles on a monthly basis, keeping its roster fresh and new.
From popular blockbusters to hidden treasures you didn’t know you needed, Kanopy has something for everyone. And unlike Netflix, there aren’t going to be any price hikes thrown at you when you least expect them. This is an actual service, in the truest sense of the word, and you definitely need to give it a try.
You can sign up with your library card now at kanopy.com.