F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions)
What kind of apps can be built with Watchmode?
Just about anything you can dream of related to streaming movies & shows can be
built with Watchmode. Universal search and discovery apps are one of the main use cases. You can build a
feature or app allowing your users to search for movies & shows on all their various streaming services at
once using the Watchmode data. Recommendation apps are also very popular. Want to build an app to recommend
the best sci-fi movies on Netflix? You can do that with the Watchmode data and APIs. Our customers also
include companies using the data for analysis & insights. For example, you could use the Watchmode dataset
to figure out what types of titles are popular across the various services. Content creators also use the
Watchmode data to generate streaming related content. For example, want to generate articles like "What are
the top 10 sci-fi movies on Amazon Prime Video?", or "What are the most popular shows to watch in the US
streaming right now?" you can build that programmatically using Watchmode data.
How does Watchmode compare to other streaming availability data providers?
One of the main reasons we launched the Watchmode Streaming Availability API was
because we couldn't get high quality data for our user facing Watchmode app from 3rd parties. So, we had to
build our own robust system for importing streaming sources because our app needed accurate and robust data.
There are only a handful of companies that have strong coverage on many streaming services, and many
countries, provide links to the content, and have high rates of accuracy. Other than Watchmode, most of
these companies charge high fees and require annual contractual commitments. There are some low-cost
providers, however their coverage and data accuracy are usually too poor to build any serious applications
around. Many companies don't also return links to play the content, episode level links, or iOS/Android
deeplinks (not having iOS deeplinks can get your app rejected by the App Store).
What data points can Watchmode return for movies or shows?
Watchmode knows a lot about every movie/show. The core of our dataset is the
streaming availability data, which includes knowing what subscription, rental, free and TV apps every movie
& show is on in each country. We also return web links, and iOS/Android deeplinks to play the content. We
also have the full listing of seasons and episodes for every show and can tell you what service each season
or episode is on, along with a link to that specific episode. We can also return standard metadata like
title description, runtime, poster, ratings, genres, release date, trailer and more. Watchmode also has a
proprietary similar titles algorithm, that calculates other movies and shows that are similar (this can be
useful when building recommendations in your app). We also return our proprietary user enjoyment rating and
critic score for each title. We also have a proprietary "relevance score" which can help you rank the most
popular/import titles in your app.
What countries does Watchmode support?
Watchmode supports 51 total countries, for a full list use the Regions endpoint. However, Watchmode has two tiers of countries. In tier 1 are
the countries with the most active streaming users: USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Spain and Brazil. These
countries are prioritized and have the most comprehensive data, have episode level links, and include more
streaming services such as TV channel apps. For the other 46 Tier 2 countries, we provide streaming
availability data, but only on the major streaming services. For free plans, only USA streaming availability
is provided. For paid plans, the country available is based on what tier plan you choose.
How do I know what the Watchmode ID of every movie and show is?
There are a few ways to map movies & tv shows in your app to the Watchmode IDs. One
super easy way is to download this CSV file, which contains the Watchmode ID, IMDB ID and TMDB ID of every
movie and show in our system and is updated daily:
/datasets/title_id_map.csv
You can also use the
/search/ endpoint
to lookup a title by name, IMDB ID or TMDB ID and get back the Watchmode ID.
Can I cache the Watchmode data into my own database?
Yes! Many of our customers download the data they want into a database and query the
API regularly to keep the data in sync. We provide a set of
Changes Endpoints
to allow you to know what has changed on our end so you can keep the dataset in sync without having to query
the API for titles that haven't changed.
How often is the data updated, and how often do certain data items change?
The dataset is updated every day. As streaming providers for each movie/show change,
the data is rapidly updated to reflect that. We also import new movies & shows every day as they are
announced. Our list of "sources" only changes when a new streaming service is released, so usually when our
customers build applications, they import the "sources" once, and check for changes on an interval (such as
monthly). Our paying customers can use the
Changes Premium Endpoints
to keep the dataset in sync any time something changes.
