Funimation vs Crunchyroll
You are here because you are a fan of anime, fantasy world stories, endless seasons of action/drama. You especially love cute characters and their supernatural abilities. Now you decide which website to choose to stream your favorite characters, there are 2 leaders to choose from – Crunchyroll or Funanimation. Let us help you decide here.
Who owns Crunchyroll and Funimation?
Currently, both streaming services are owned by Sony Corporation. The two companies announced in 2022 that content from Funimation would be integrated into Crunchyroll.
What are these sites?
Both are famous for streaming premium anime content all over the world. Funimation is only available in the United States, Canada, Brazil, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand. Crunchyroll is more widespread. Both sites have anime fan subscribers worldwide.
How are the two sites’ subscription models?
Funimation has 2 plans, Premium is $7.99 per month and Premium Plus is $9.99 per month. Both plans also come in annual plans for $79.99 and $99.99 respectively. Both plans feature an ad-free viewing experience, subtitles, and voiceovers for many titles. The difference is that the premium plan supports streaming simultaneously on 2 devices while Premium Plus on 5 devices. Premium Plus also supports the feature to download and watch content offline.
Crunchyroll has a 14 day trial and thereafter 3 premium plans – Fan is $7.99 per month, Mega Fan is $9.99 per month and Ultimate Fan is $14.99 per month. All plans feature no ads, all access, new episodes one hour after Japan premiere, digital manga content. The fan only supports one device at a time, with the latter supporting 4 and 6 devices respectively. Offline viewing is supported only in Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan.
What devices are supported for streaming?
Both websites are available in a wide variety of streaming devices from dedicated apps/browsers. Compatible devices include smart TVs, cell phones (Android/iOS), PCs, laptops (Windows/Mac), streaming sticks (Android TV, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast), game consoles (PlayStation, Xbox).
Review of the content of both sites
Crunchyroll has one of the most comprehensive anime collections totaling over 30,000 episodes, over 1,300 titles. Popular titles include Death note, Full Metal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece. You get a modern way of looking at titles. There are also many original series. The spring 2023 collection is mainly on Crunchyroll. You will also find jap/j-dramas shows. Membership also provides access to premium mobile games, members-only events, theatrical distribution, collectibles, digital manga content, exclusive titles.
Funimation has a better description of shows compared to Crunchyroll. Show clips are not available in Funimation. If one wants to watch anime dubs in English, Funimation is the choice. with its huge collection targeting English-speaking audiences. You won’t find many voiceovers on Crunchyroll. It also has more/better subtitles. The new upcoming series are mostly on Crunchyroll after the acquisition, they even have a banner on their site advertising the same.
Also note that content varies by country. Obviously, the United States has the most content on both sites.
Sailing comfort
Crunchyroll’s user interface is a bit difficult to adapt. It has a huge collection of content which can be filtered by seasons, genres, alphabet, popular, etc. Genres include Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi, Music, Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Shoujo, Seinen, Shonen, Supernatural, etc.
Funimation is intuitive to navigate. It also groups content by genres, popular, seasons. It contains much more descriptive text about the series/episode.
It’s pretty clear by now that with the same price and funimation content moving to Crunchyroll, the winner is Crunchyroll. There are also new competitors for these sites like Netflix, Prime Video, etc. that should be considered.