Number of Crunchyroll subscribers 2012-2021

As of August 2021, the anime-focused subscription video-on-demand platform Crunchyroll had five million paying subscribers. Subscription numbers have grown rapidly in recent years, with the company managing to triple its number of paying subscribers between February 2017 and the beginning of 2021.

What is Crunchyroll?

Similar to services like Netflix and Hulu, Crunchyroll provides subscribers with on-demand access to shows and video media through monthly subscriptions. The service previously also offered cheaper, ad-supported programming, but has since stopped offering this service. Unlike its competitors, Crunchyroll focuses entirely upon one genre, anime. Its narrow focus ensures that it has an extremely extensive collection of titles that specifically cater to the interests of its subscribers. This unique product offering has made Crunchyroll of the leading entertainment apps in the United States.

Anime and manga

Anime is a type of cartoon animation series that originated in Japan, which often spawns from Japanese comic books called manga. Extremely popular within Japan, anime has also garnered large followings from around the world and the industry earns millions of dollars in overseas sales each year. With many manga series selling hundreds of millions of copies, the audience for these types of entertainment is huge, highlighting the importance and appeal of services such as Crunchyroll.