Trackers vs. Media Servers

Trackers vs. Media Servers: Different Jobs, Different Flows

A tracker (SIMKL, Trakt, MDBlist) is your taste profile: what you watched, when you watched it, and how you rated it, across apps and devices, forever. A media server (Plex, Jellyfin, Emby) is your jukebox: it scans files, matches metadata, plays stuff for whoever’s on the couch today, and occasionally rematches when metadata shifts.

These are not the same job.

Why Media Server to Tracker makes perfect sense

• The server knows what actually played at home.

• The tracker turns that into a portable history and recommendations.

• Multiple servers? Doesn’t matter, one tracker keeps the full picture.

• Ratings entered on the server can feed the tracker’s global ecosystem.