MyAnimeList (MAL) is an English-language anime and manga database combined with a social cataloging community: users look up titles, maintain watching/reading lists with per-episode or per-chapter progress, and score entries on a 1–10 scale that feeds the site's weighted rankings. Launched in November 2004, its content is maintained by volunteer users, and the site describes itself as the world's largest anime and manga database. According to the site's own figures from January 2023, the database held 23,774 anime and 62,056 manga entries, 155,158 character entries, and 13.9 million registered users. Since May 2025 the site has been wholly owned by Gaudiy, a Tokyo-based entertainment technology company.

The MyAnimeList home page: seasonal anime, manga store, and top airing rankings

The screenshot above shows the MyAnimeList home page (taken 2026-09-02): the current season (Summer 2026) and the manga store on the left, a "Top Airing Anime" digest ranked by member count on the right, and navigation covering anime, manga, community, and industry news. Almost everything is readable without an account.

At a glance

  • URL: https://myanimelist.net/
  • Type: Anime/manga database + social cataloging (user-generated content)
  • Cost: Free with ads; the paid MAL Supporter subscription removes ads and adds perks
  • Registration: Not required for browsing; a free account is needed for lists, scoring, and posting
  • Interface language: English only (titles are primarily romanized Japanese)
  • Launched: November 2004
  • Operator: MyAnimeList Co., Ltd. (Tokyo), a wholly owned subsidiary of Gaudiy since May 2025

Background: four acquisitions and publisher shareholders

MyAnimeList was created by Garrett Gyssler in November 2004. Originally called AnimeList, it adopted the "My" prefix in the fashion of Myspace, the dominant social network of the time. The site has changed hands four times since (sources: Wikipedia and the official announcements linked below):

The database and list tracking

MAL catalogs Japanese anime and manga alongside Korean aeni and manhwa, Chinese donghua and manhua, doujinshi, and light novels. Each entry page aggregates the weighted score, rankings, member counts, synopsis, staff, genres and themes, and related works. Database content is submitted by volunteers and reviewed by database administrators.

The Cowboy Bebop entry page: score, rankings, member count, and structured details

Above is the entry page for Cowboy Bebop (screenshot from 2026-09-02): a weighted score of 8.75, ranked #50 overall and #41 by popularity, with about 2.08 million members listing it; the left sidebar carries structured data such as episode count, airing dates, studios, and themes.

The seasonal anime page: browse titles by broadcast season

For current shows, the seasonal page shown above lists every title in a broadcast season (e.g., Summer 2026), filterable by format (TV, ONA, movie, and so on); each card shows the premiere date, studio, source material, and current score. The page also integrates legal streaming availability by region.

Scoring and rankings

Registered users score list entries from 1 to 10. Rankings use a weighted formula documented by the site: an entry needs a minimum number of scoring users, only scores from users who have completed at least one-fifth of the title are counted, and scores from illegitimate accounts created to sway votes are excluded. Ranks are recalculated twice a day, and R18+ entries are excluded from the top lists.

The Top Anime ranking, ordered by weighted score

The screenshot above shows the Top Anime ranking (2026-09-02): Frieren: Beyond Journey's End at #1, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood at #2 with 9.11, and a note that the chart updates twice a day. Separate charts exist for airing, upcoming, and per-format rankings. In February 2020 the site updated its scoring rules to counter vote brigading.

Community, accounts, and open access

Beyond the database, MAL hosts reviews, recommendations, forums, clubs, blogs, Interest Stacks, industry news, and annual watching/reading challenges; official iOS and Android apps are available. As of January 2023 the site held over 220,000 reviews and 280,000 recommendations.

For developers, there is an official API v2: register an application for a Client ID, then access it via OAuth 2.0 to query entry details, rankings, and seasonal lists, or to update a user's list on their behalf. The community also maintains Jikan, an unofficial, free, MIT-licensed proxy that scrapes MAL's public pages and reports handling over 25 million requests per week—useful when write access is not needed. One caveat: in May 2018 the site disabled its API during GDPR-related maintenance, breaking most third-party apps, so API policies have shifted before.

Copyright and content policy

As a user-generated-content site, MAL's Terms of Use (last updated 2025-12-16) state that users are responsible for what they post and, by posting, grant MyAnimeList Co., Ltd. a non-exclusive, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license to that content; the terms also enumerate prohibited content categories. The site runs a DMCA notice-and-counter-notice process and terminates repeat infringers. Database entries and synopses are maintained by volunteers, and forum moderation is handled by volunteer moderators whose views do not represent the company.

Good for

  • Looking up staff, relations, and English-speaking fan reception for a given anime or manga
  • Keeping a long-term, cross-device record of what you have watched or read
  • Following a broadcast season and finding backlog titles via charts and recommendations
  • Building apps that need anime/manga metadata (official API or Jikan)

Limitations

  • English only: the interface and database are English, with titles mostly in romanized Japanese, which can hinder searching in other languages; multilingual database support was announced as a goal in 2021, but as of 2026-09-02 the UI remains English-only.
  • Blocked in Russia: on October 22, 2025, media regulator Roskomnadzor added MAL to Russia's national blocklist over alleged "extremist" LGBTQ+ content.
  • Volatile scores: ratings for new and airing shows swing with audience influxes; the weighted formula and anti-brigading rules mitigate this, but chart positions are only one reference point.
  • Past outages and incidents: extended maintenance and API shutdown in May 2018; a May 2023 hack defaced entry titles site-wide and cost roughly 8.5 hours of list updates and posts after a backup restore (the site said no personal data was breached).
  • Ads on the free tier: display ads are present; removing them requires a MAL Supporter subscription.

Alternatives

  • AniList — a comparable tracking and database site with a more modern interface and a GraphQL API.
  • AniDB — a long-running, non-commercial anime database focused on file-level and episode-precise data.
  • Anime News Network — stronger on industry news and encyclopedia coverage, complementary to MAL's tracking community.

Sources