How to export Letterboxd data: keep ratings, dates and reviews

Your Letterboxd diary might be a decade of taste, ratings, rewatches, reviews, tags and the watchlist you’ll never finish. Moving that history into a new tracker should not mean rebuilding it by hand. Here’s how to export your Letterboxd data, what the ZIP contains, what Kinolog imports, and which details are worth checking after the move.

Step one: get your export from Letterboxd

• Open Letterboxd’s official Export your data page while signed in. Letterboxd also exposes the same account-export option from Settings.
• Letterboxd generates a .zip of CSV files. Kinolog reads diary.csv (dated watches, ratings and rewatch flags), watched.csv, ratings.csv, reviews.csv, watchlist.csv, likes/films.csv, and the favourite-film fields in profile.csv. Tags carried by diary and review rows come across too.
• Download it. That zip is the whole move, don’t unzip it, you’ll upload it as-is.

Step two: upload it to Kinolog

In Kinolog, import is offered during welcome and remains available later from Settings. Upload the ZIP as-is; the importer reconciles the supported CSVs into one private diary:

• Diary entries keep their dates; ratings keep their half-stars; rewatches stay rewatches.
• Watched-but-undated films stay honestly undated. They’re imported with watch date “unknown” rather than stamped with today, so your stats and year-in-review never lie about when.
• Reviews and tags keep their words. Review text becomes the film note, while Letterboxd tags are preserved with it as explicit imported tags rather than silently discarded.
• Ambiguous titles get reviewed by you, not guessed. When a CSV row could match two films (remakes, same-title re-releases), it lands in a review queue for a human decision instead of silently polluting your history.

Your first Letterboxd history comes in full on Free. Repeat bulk imports are limited on Free; Plus removes that repeat-import ceiling. The limit governs adding more imported films, never reading, editing or exporting the history already in your diary.

This is an export-file import, not a live sync with Letterboxd. New watches you add there later will not appear automatically in Kinolog. Keep the original ZIP until you have checked your diary and resolved any unmatched titles.

Step three: check the seams

Two minutes of hygiene after any import, on any platform: scan the review queue for those ambiguous matches, spot-check a few favorites for the right rating, and skim your watchlist for things you’ve since seen. Then you’re done, recommendations from your very first ask are grounded in your real history instead of an onboarding quiz. The imported ratings can also help build your movie taste profile as the evidence grows.

If your Letterboxd import looks incomplete

Treat every import as a move of your own records, not a number that has to match instantly. Open a few entries you know well: one with a dated watch, one with a written review, one with a half-star rating, and one on your watchlist. Make sure each survived in the right place. An import that reports success but loses your notes or merges a same-title remake is not a successful move.

• Missing a familiar movie? Check the unmatched-title review queue. A film with an ambiguous name should wait for your choice, not be assigned silently to the wrong release.
• Dates look wrong? Compare a dated diary entry with the original exported diary.csv. A rating-only entry is not evidence of a precise watch date.
• Notes missing? Check the exported review records and the imported film detail. Ratings, reviews and watched history are distinct parts of the export.
• Want to retry? Keep the original ZIP and examine the import review/status screen before trying another bulk import. A repeat import can be subject to a Free-plan limit; it is not automatic live sync.

If the actual import status or one of those records is inconsistent, contactKinolog support with the type of discrepancy, not your private ZIP or account credentials in a public forum. Do not delete your Letterboxd account or its export until you have independently checked your new diary.

Why this matters more than it seems

Trackers compete on features, but they should be judged on custody: your diary is a long-term document that will outlive any app’s roadmap, including ours. Import without loss, export without friction. That’s the whole covenant. If you’re weighing a move, compare Kinolog and Letterboxd feature by feature, read our honest guide to Letterboxd alternatives, or see what a private movie diary keeps once the history lands.

Once the history is in, two things work straight away on a free account: your stats and a yearly recap from the imported diary, and recommendations from your Letterboxd ratings.