There are plenty of places to watch free movies online but the sites listed below have the largest amount of movies, are safe for your computer or TV, don't require a download, and, most importantly, are legal for you to use. Many of these websites also have free movie apps so you can access the free movies on your mobile device.
These aren't movie clip or trailers, but free full-length movies that you can watch beginning to end with perhaps a few commercial interruptions. All genres of movies can be found as well, from comedy to drama from horror to action to educational. There are movies from big-name studios to older or independent movies that many of us love to watch over and over again.
If you want a quick way to search for free (and cheap) movies through dozens of websites at once, try JustWatch. It doesn't search through all the movie websites listed below but it does work with a few of them.
Torrent sites are also a common place to find free movie downloads, but please remember that most movie torrents are provided illegally. You're much better off sticking to legal movie streaming sites like the ones listed below.
Did you know you can watch streaming movies on any device that can uses a data plan? iPhones and Android phones made by manufacturers like Samsung, Google, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. are all capable of streaming both movies and television shows.
Sony Crackle tops our list for the best place to watch free movies online because it's owned by Sony Pictures, meaning that they have hundreds of full-length, free movies you can watch any time. These are big name movies with stars you know.
These high-quality movies look spectacular on whatever size of monitor or screen you're watching them on. You'll have to sit through a few commercials every once in awhile but they're short and there are only a few commercial breaks during a feature-length movie.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, The Blue Lagoon, St. Elmo's Fire, The Devil's Own, Resident Evil, Boogeyman, Shutter Island, Zodiac, and Hollow Man are some of the free movies we've spotted at Sony Crackle.
Popcornflix is another great place to watch free movies online. Their constant flow of new movies from Screen Media Ventures means that they have lots of new movies being added all the time.
Popcornflix has over 1,500 movies that include comedy, drama, horror, action, romance, family, documentaries, and foreign films. They also feature web and film school originals.
No account is needed at Popcornflix, simply hit Play on your chosen movie and enjoy.
These are just a few of the newest arrivals at Popcornflix: Raw Meat, Bed and Breakfast, Conduct Unbecoming, Demon Seed, Empty Space, and Rabid.
Yidio is a website with several categories showing you where you can watch movies. One such category is designed specifically for free online movies.
It's super easy to sort the free movies at Yidio by rating, like R, PG-13, and G, as well as by genre. Some examples of the genres include Animation, Classics, Musical, Special Interest, Family, Indie, Suspense, TV Movie, and Western.
Some of the new free movies we spotted last time we visited Yidio were Parasite, Jesse, Technotise, The Reckoning, The Three Dogateers, Hidden Moon, Girl, and Femme Fatale.
YouTube isn't just the place to go to watch videos of skateboarding dogs or the latest movie trailers. They now have movies you can rent but more importantly, movies that you can watch for free.
New and popular movies are easily accessible from the Movies section of YouTube. You can also browse through different genres and, of course, free movies that you can watch right now at no cost.
At our last visit to YouTube we were able to watch free movies online like The Terminator, Devil Winds, The Reef, Grey Owl, Sleepover, Missing 411, Arthur's Missing Pal, Igor, and The Arrival.
SnagFilms is one of my new favorite places to watch free movies online. It has a catalog of over 10,000 films that you can browse by genre or search for by title.
Although they've been known to change, one neat feature of SnagFilms is the editor and user-curated collections you'll find, like "Before They Were Stars," "Explore the World," "History Lessons," "Refugee & Immigrant Stories," "Celebrate Pride," and "Veterans & The Military."
A few of the free movies we've been able to see at SnagFilms include Alive Inside, The Corporation, Lost for Life, Forever, Medea, Men in Love, and Toys Will Be Toys.
Tubi has thousands of free movies and TV shows that you can stream right now. Some of them can only be rented, and not viewed for free, but many of them are absolutely free to stream.
There are dozens of genres you can pick from at Tubi , including regular ones for romance, drama, documentary, kids, comedy, and horror films, as well as unique genres like Wild Things (Nature), Best of British, Women First, After Hours, and Grindhouse.
Tubi's movies can also be viewed by the Featured, New Releases, Movie Night, Trending, Highly Rated on Rotten Tomatoes, Indie Films, and Not on Netflix sections.
Some examples of free movies you can watch at Tubi include Dark Blue, Traded, Megamind, Let Go, Rage, Tales of Halloween, Bear, The Nut Job, Escape Plan, Coneheads, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Films can be filtered and sorted in a number of ways
You can also buy and rent movies
What We Don't Like
Not everything is free to watch
All free movies display ads
Vudu might not be your first pick when looking for free sites for streaming movies but there are in fact thousands of movies here that you can watch right now. All you have to do is put up with a few commercials.
A few of this website's newest additions include Happy Feet, Con Air, Cats and Dogs, Shaun the Sheep Movie, Maggie, Ali, Pearl Harbor, While You Were Sleeping, Free Willy, and 30 Days of Night.
One great thing about Vudu's free movies is that some of them are in 1080p, so you don't have to sacrifice quality just to watch some free movies.
You can use the New page on Vudu's website to see which free movies were most recently included in their collection. There's also a genre section for some other ways to find free movies in categories like romance, comedy, crime & suspense, faith & inspirational, action, family & kids, etc.
Once you settle on something to watch, you might be given the option to buy or rent it, but so long as you found it through the Free page, there will be a free button you can use to stream the movie without paying. Of course, you could also pay for movies at Vudu, too.
You do need a user account in order to watch movies at Vudu, even the ones that don't cost, but registration is totally free.
Caption text background and font can be customized
Also includes TV shows
What We Don't Like
Includes ads
Works in the US only (if streaming from a desktop browser)
Works in the US and Canada only (if streaming from a Roku player or Roku TV)
No mobile app (there is a mobile website)
User account required (it's free)
Free movies are also available from The Roku Channel. If you have a Roku TV or streaming player, you can add The Roku Channel to your device, but even if you don't have one, you can still stream all the movies free to your computer or mobile device.
There are some ads in these movies but the trade off is really high quality videos and well-known movies.
Here are a few examples of free movies you can watch on The Roku Channel: Memento, Highlander: The Source, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hugo, Triangle, and Bewitched.
In addition to free movies on The Roku Channel is live TV from channels like ABC News and PeopleTV, plus free TV shows.
If you're a documentary fan, you'll want to check out Top Documentary Films where you can watch public domain streaming documentaries for free.
The documentaries are organized in categories like Technology, Society, Science, Politics, Nature, Future by Design, Mystery, History, Conspiracy, Environment, and more.
Some of the recently featured documentaries here include Super Hurricanes, Inside Chernobyl, America's Great Indian Leaders, Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Galaxy, and Four Horsemen.
If you're not sure what to watch, the Top 100 page might give you some good ideas.
Classic Cinema Online houses only a handful of free movies at a time but they also have a wonderful collection of silent films if you're interested in those.
There are wonderful classic movies available for streaming at Classic Cinema Online, with stars like Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Richard Burton, and Lucille Ball.
Visit Retrovision for the free movies online and you'll find a ton of adventure, comedy, crime, drama, horror, science fiction, Western, war, and film noir movies that are all free.
Besides having free movies like Children of the Corn and For You I Die, Retrovision also has some of your favorite classic TV shows like Bonanza, Beverly Hillbillies, Burns and Allen, Dick Van Dyke, Gang Busters,and One Step Beyond.
If you're a classic movie buff who couldn't find what you needed in the other classic movie streaming sites above, Big Five Glories might be where you stop looking.
Every movie is in the public domain. There are silent films here as well as ones with sound, plus black and white movies and color movies. The free movies here range from the early 1900s to the 1970s.
You can see all the movies they have available on their All Classic Movies page, but you can also browse by silent films, color films, year, and genre for sci-fi, romance, war, western, thriller, and other movies.
A few examples of the movies you can watch for free at Big Five Glories include Grandma's Boy, The Birth of a Nation, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, The Scar, and Reefer Madness.
Lets you start the movie from an earlier time or watch it live
Includes on-demand movies, too
Includes TV shows, news, music, and more
What We Don't Like
Has only a dozen or so channels for just movies
Doesn't include subtitle options
Live-streamed movies can't be watched again on demand
Pluto TV works in two ways, as both an on-demand movie streaming website where you can pick from a list of films, as well as a live TV service that lets you watch movies and TV shows as they become available.
You can watch live TV and movies from your web browser through the Pluto.tv/watch website or through the mobile or desktop app by downloading the appropriate software—it's available for iOS, Android, and several other devices.
Find comedy, drama, action, horror, and other movie types at Pluto TV, both on-demand and live. If you're streaming live TV, the movie channels include channel 7, 52, 54, and more; other channels have live sports, music, news, and more.
Some of the popular on-demand movies at Pluto TV include Congo, Fifty Shades of Black, Identity, Eight Millimeter, Down to Earth, Beverly Hills Cop 3, Sahara, and Popeye.
Free Movies Cinema is a collection of independent and public domain movies in categories such as Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Short Film, Drama, Horror, Fantasy, and Documentary.
There are also playlists you can browse through to find similar movies, like war movies, zombie films, and Westerns.
A few movies you can stream at Free Movies Cinema include Scratch, Jameson, Ink, Zero, Nano, Coatmaker, Lucy's Tale, and After Her.
Internet Archive Movie Archive is another place you can go to find free movies online that all fall under public domain so they are free to watch and download.
You'll find videos in nearly every year imaginable, from 2019 back through the 1900s.
Be sure to check out their blog to help you find the free online movies that are most popular and critically-acclaimed. They might also release updates regarding new movie releases on their Twitter or Facebook page.
Must have a supported library card to watch the free movies
Kanopy is different than these other free movie streaming websites because you need a library card at a supporting library before you can watch anything. However, there are zero commercials in the movies, and new films are added every month.
Use the Kanopy signup page to search for your library, whether it's a public library or one attached to a school. Once you've been approved, you can start watching the free movies they have on their website.
Kanopy has thousands of movies, listed in full here. There are science fiction, fantasy, drama, classic, romance, war, comedy, and other movie genres, including TV series. You'll also find documentaries, independent films, media and communication videos, business-centered films, and more. There's even an entirely separate section for movies for kids.
A few of the more popular movies at Kanopy include Palo Alto, Hereditary, The Hours, Zodiac, What Richard Did, The Bookshop, The Awakening, Prospect, Under the Silver Lake, The Children Act, Detachment, Her Smell, and Eighth Grade.
MoviesFoundOnline.com takes public domain movies from all over the internet and organizes them so you can find the movies you want to watch.
The free online movies here are all listed on one page by genre along with the release year. You can also view the movies by most recently added, year, and top rated.
The last time we visited, some of the newer additions included Seven Minutes in Heaven, A Bridge Too Far, and Volcanosaur.
Public Domain Torrents is the place to go if you want to watch classic movies and B-movies for free online. All the movies here are public domain so they are completely legal to watch.
These aren't just free movies online either, you can also download the movies for free in a variety of formats.
Some of the free movie streams available here include Gulliver's Travels, Horrors of Spider Island, Attack The Battle for New Britain, Haxan, Reefer Madness and Night of the Living Dead.
Megan decided to unite her Honors Degree in New Media and lifetime of geekiness to pursue a career in tech and gaming journalism. You can usually find her writing about a variety of topics and drooling over new gadgets and games.
With deliberate misinformation campaigns and the continued prevalence of fake news, fact-checking sites are now more important than ever.
So in the digital era, where news travels quickly through multiple channels, how do you check your facts? Here are five of the best fact-checking websites, like Snopes and PolitiFact, so that you can find the truth.
If you were wondering who is there to fact check the fact-checkers, that would be MBFC. From Palmer Report to Breitbart and even browser extensions like Newsguard, MBFC rates them all.
The website is a bias rating resource, with multiple fake news checking apps and extensions integrating these ratings into their own systems. The site’s reputation means that it has long been a resource that internet users can visit to check the bias in their favorite news websites.
MBFC not only includes reports on the bias of famous fact-checking websites like Snopes and PolitiFact but also publishes a daily source bias check. Factors that they consider include sourcing, biased wording, story choices, and political affiliation.
The site analyzes bias, transparency regarding funding sources, press freedom in the country of origin, and the site’s history of factual reporting. Failed fact-checks and instances of biased language are flagged in each site’s summary.
Finally, MBFC also has extensive lists on news sources with different biases (right, extreme, left, etc.). This includes lists of websites known for conspiracies, pseudoscience, and questionable sources. This helps users know which reports to take with a pinch of salt.
We’ve also included the MBFC News bias rating on each of the fact-checking sites on this list, excluding any sites that have been flagged as including bias.
Is Snopes biased? According to MBFC, as well as other fact-checking sites, the answer is no.
Snopes started out as a site that mainly dealt with urban legends, myths, common misconceptions, and rumors. However, it has expanded to encompass general fact-checking of viral misinformation, including political statements.
Snopes has been accused of receiving funding from liberal billionaire George Soros. However, Snope’s disclosure page provides a summary of the website’s yearly expenditure and income. Its income is split between its GoFundMe campaign, advertising, its Facebook fact-checking partnership, reader contributions, and shareholder financing.
The website further states:
“We do not accept political advertising, nor do we accept any other form of funding from political parties, political campaigns, or political advocacy groups. We accept contributions directly from our readers and from non-partisan organizations to further our mission. The source of any single contribution we receive exceeding $10,000 or comprising more than 5% of our total annual revenue will be disclosed to the public.”
Meanwhile, FactCheck.org has put its weight behind Snopes; saying it is a reliable source and frequently citing the website in their own fact-checking articles.
PolitiFact is a non-partisan fact-checking website that focuses on political claims made in the US. This includes statements by politicians, political topics such as immigration, and general political news. A global edition of the site tackles stories from other parts of the world.
PolitiFact is a Pulitzer Prize-winning website and was acquired by the Poynter Institute in 2018—a reflection of the site’s commitment to truthful journalism.
The website has a few unique elements that make it stand out from other fact-checking websites. Firstly, there’s the Truth-o-Meter, which assesses the level of truth in a statement. This scale includes levels such as true, half true, mostly false, and even a “pants on fire” rating at the far end of the meter. The site even has an affiliated app called PolitiTruth that aims to test your political knowledge and susceptibility to fake news.
MBFC continues to rate PolitiFact as one of the most reliable, truthful fact-checking sites out there.
Not only is FactCheck.org a fact-checking website with an established history of journalistic rigor, but it also partners with Facebook to combat viral fake news.
FactCheck is a non-partisan fact-checking website which focuses primarily on US politics. It is also a non-profit project—meaning it focuses on information, not the pursuit of profit.
Not only does the site regularly debunk politician claims and viral fake news, but it also lets users submit their own questions to the website.
TruthOrFiction.com is one of the longest-running fact-checking sites out there. While it initially focused on looking at internet hoaxes and rumors, it has extended its range to include general fake news as well. This includes political stories and viral content.
The website gives stories various ratings to reflect their reliability. These include ratings such as true, fiction, unknown, decontextualized, or variations thereof. The analyses of rumors or stories look at the origins of these stories, whether there are elements of truth, and where stories may have gone astray (such as decontextualizing truth).
Lead Stories is a lesser-known website that helps users fact-check information. The website debunks fake news across a variety of beats, including entertainment, tech, politics, and international news.
The website also uses the Trendolizer search engine to monitor trending content—using these results to identify trending fake news. Depending on certain criteria, the site then debunks any trending hoaxes or false information using objective sources.
“Generally we will prioritize stories that are most trending or which are very new and which are gaining traction fastest. We might occasionally also tackle a story that has been debunked by another site already if we have more/better information. And if we receive a tip from a reader or spot an obvious hoax making the rounds on social media we might also decide to fact check and/or debunk it if it meets the above criteria,” Lead Stories explains in their methodology.
The site also partners with Facebook as part of the social network’s effort to combat fake news.
Hoax Slayer is another reliable website that you can use to check out the latest online hoaxes. It focuses primarily on the type of hoaxes and misinformation shared on social media, such as Facebook scams, viral privacy policy hoaxes, phishing scams, and social network rumors.
The site mostly stays away from fact-checking politicians, considering there are a number of other sites that do this already. However, it does debunk certain fake news stories with a political agenda. One example includes debunking a WhatsApp message that claimed a billboard in Zimbabwe claimed white people can be killed in South Africa with no consequence, encouraging people to get in touch with South Africa’s ruling party to see how.
Hoax Slayer is also a much smaller website than others on this list, owned and run by Australian Brett M. Christensen. Despite this, the site has a stellar rating from MBFC for its factual reporting and neutrality.
If you are looking for a UK-based fact-checking website, Full Fact is considered a reliable source and is endorsed by MBFC. The website is a fact-checking charity, with a diverse range of funding and transparency around income. They even make sure their Board of Trustees come from different sides of the political spectrum.
Full Fact also goes further than fact checks and even provides a fact-checking toolkit. The site also pushes for corrections from publishers when they publish incorrect or misleading information.
Fact-Checking Sites With Bias?
There are a few popular fact-checking websites that do receive high ratings for factual reporting but do not qualify for this list due to receiving a biased score on MBFC.
A few of these sites include:
Fact Checker by Washington Pos: Left-center bias
CheckYourFact: Right-center bias
FactMyth.com: Left-center bias
Zebra Fact Check: Right-center bias
ExposingTruth.com: Left-center bias
These biases emerge from the focal point of fact checks (such as fact-checking the right more than the left), or from the occasional use of loaded words to sway readers. While these websites do usually use credible sources, their focus indicates some level of bias.
How to Do Your Own Fact-Checking
While fact-checking websites will help you debunk myths and fake news, you should also aim to improve your own skills at spotting fake news. This will help you figure out the best ways to research topics, avoid confirmation bias, and learn which sites are not credible sources.
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