Looking at unofficial streaming add-ons for Kodi, but not sure which ones work the best?
While my Kodi streaming add-ons tracker does a great job at showing you which add-ons are actively being maintained and which ones people vote up or down more often, it’s still not quite enough. I want to see some numbers side by side!
So, I devised a test where I configured several of the most popular add-on the same way and then tried to play the same TV show episode from each one. This would show how many sources were scraped from each add-on and how many of them are in each quality category.
The Kodi Add-on Scraping Test
Here were the parameters of my test.
First, each add-on was configured with…
- Real-Debrid authorized
- Max quality = 4K
- Debrid sources only = Off
- Timeout = 60 seconds
- Preemptive termination = Off
With this configuration, I should get the most number of links possible without any limits.
The TV show episode that I tried to play with each add-on was the first episode of Stranger Things season 3 because it a very popular show yet the season is still somewhat recent at the time of writing this.
For the measurement, I took a screenshot right before the last provider finished or when the 60 second timeout was about to be up.
So, without further ado, here were the results…
Gaia
- Gaia wins first place by having the most 4K (HDULTRA), HD1080, and HD720 out of any of the tested add-ons (by kind of a lot, too).
- Mostly Debrid Torrents which are great.
- I apparently had it configured for Debrid Only, otherwise it would have scraped a lot more free direct hosters.
Seren
- In 2nd place, Seren found 8 4K sources (only 1 less than Gaia found), and the rest of the quality categories were fairly average.
- Found a good mix of Torrents and Debrid-Cached sources.
- Seren is Debrid-only.
Venom
- Found 1 4K source
- Found good amount of sources for the rest of the qualities as long as you’re using debrid.
- The free non-debrid is basically just SD videos. No free 1080p sources and only 1 free 720p source.
Tempest
- No 4K sources found and a weak showing on 1080p and 720p sources.
- Found the most free 720p sources out of any of the tested add-ons.
- This add-on is crushing the SD sources making it the highest total sources count (if you care).
Exodus Redux
- No 4K sources found, but much better selection of 1080p and 720p sources
Yoda
- No 4K sources, but good selection of 1080p and 720p on Debrid.
- No free 1080p sources.
- FYI, this add-on was shut down by its original developer, but is now being hosted in the Gaia repo. Keep an eye on it if there are ongoing updates if a developer took over the maintenance.
Resistance
- Pretty spotty results here. No 4K, no free 1080p, no debrid 720p.
- There were still 5 providers left to scrape, but they were stuck like this for a long time until the 60 second time-out was up.
- I definitely would not recommend Resistance based on this result.
Scrubs v2
- I was a bit surprised because I’ve heard a lot of people say good things about Scrubs v2, but it had a horrible showing on this test.
- The lowest number of debrid sources… just 11, and all SD quality.
- On the free side, nothing better than 4 720p sources.
How to Install These Add-ons
Instead of linking each of these to their installation tutorial posts, I’m going to first send you over to my Kodi add-on tracker where you can check on the most current information about these add-ons before you decide to try some out.
just signed up
For what?