Crunchyroll Premium Membership FAQ

Last updated: 7/26/2013

  1. How does the Crunchyroll Premium Membership work?

    You may purchase a Crunchyroll Premium Membership (for yourself or a friend) by using our easy and secure checkout system. Once you are a Premium Member, your Crunchyroll account will automatically be upgraded to have special premium benefits.

  2. What are the benefits of the Premium Membership?

    There are currently several benefits you enjoy as a Crunchyroll Premium Member, for example:
    • You'll get early access to most anime titles available on Crunchyroll, which generally means within an hour of the show being broadcast on television in Japan (compared to regular users who must wait up to a week later).
    • In addition to standard definition, you may also enjoy High Definition (HD) 1080p and 720p-quality videos for early-access (Simulcast) shows, as well as back-catalog episodes.
    • You will never be shown any in-video advertisements.
    • You will receive additional discounts on items like DVDs featured in our Daily Deal program.

  3. How much do the plans cost?

    Click here for the latest prices. For your convenience, this subscription will automatically renew, but you may cancel your renewal at any time.

  4. Where does that money go?

    A significant portion of the membership fees goes towards supporting the people who created the show. The remainder helps us defray the costs of servers, bandwidth, staff, and so on.

  5. What payment methods do you accept?

    We accept purchases through the use of a Credit Card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover), and Paypal. If none of these payment options are available to you, please check back frequently; we are exploring other payment methods. For specific instructions on how to purchase membership on Crunchyroll, please refer to the Payment Methods Guide.

  6. Can I cancel anytime?

    Of course! You can easily cancel your renewal at any time, online, 24 hours a day with no cancellation fees. Although, there are no refunds for partial subscriptions.

    Note: Your cancellation will not process until you completely fill out the Exit Survey.

    If you purchased a Premium Membership subscription through iTunes, follow this link for management instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4098

  7. What video qualities are provided?

    We present almost all of our videos in SD and 480p qualities but we also provide 720p and 1080p quality when we receive an HD source video from our Publishers. We provide all of these quality levels for our Premium Members so that you may choose the quality that best fits your computer's and internet connection's capabilities. You can change the Default Video Quality from your Video Preferences page.
    • SD: The lowest quality available that all users have access to.
    • 480p: This is the same resolution that you would find on DVDs though it's highly compressed in order for most people to stream the videos while using minimal internet resources. The downside to this is that you need a fairly fast computer in order to decode the video.
    • 720p: This is the second highest quality that we offer but it's only available for select Simulcast titles. This is also provided in a highly compressed format but you still may need an above average internet connection to view it (depending on where you are from) and a very fast computer to decode the video without stuttering.
    • 1080p: This is the highest quality that we offer and is only recommended for people with a high end computer and internet connection. Trying to run this on a lower end computer may cause the video playback to studder a lot, cause your computer to slow down in general and may even crash your web browser or Adobe Flash plugin. So please make sure your computer can handle our 1080p videos before loading one.

  8. How fast are the video streams?

    All of our videos are streamed through a CDN service which is used to make sure that, no matter where you are in the world, there is a server close by for you to stream from. Also, Premium Members receive priority access to our video streams which ensures that our servers allow the videos to load much faster than necessary in order to seamlessly stream our 720p and 1080p videos. However, if your internet connection speed is too slow or you are experiencing a network routing issue, you will have problems streaming the videos. When this happens, you should refer to our Video Help Guide.

  9. What are the system requirements for viewing High Definition (HD) videos on Crunchyroll?

    Due to the demanding nature of HD content, it is recommended that it be viewed on a computer robust enough to support it. For starters, you will need Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115; though Version 10.1 or higher is strongly recommended (Check your version of flash here and get the latest flash player here.) You will also need a broadband internet connection in order to stream the videos (e.g. Cable, DSL, etc.)

    In order to decode our High Definition (HD) videos you need to have a computer with specs that meet or exceed the specs in the examples below:

    For 720p
    1. Example 1
      • Intel Pentium 4 2GHz processor (CPU).
      • A Graphics Card (GPU) that supports Adobe Flash's hardware acceleration.
      • 256MB of available system memory (RAM).
    2. Example 2
      • Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz processor (CPU).
      • A supported Graphics Card (GPU) is not required but would help.
      • 256MB of available system memory (RAM).


    For 1080p
    1. Example 1
      • Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz processor (CPU).
      • A Graphics Card (GPU) that supports Adobe Flash's hardware acceleration.
      • 512MB of available system memory (RAM).
    2. Example 2
      • Intel Core 2 Quad 2.5GHz processor (CPU).
      • A supported Graphics Card (GPU) is not required but would help.
      • 512MB of available system memory (RAM).

  10. Can I get this as a gift for someone?

    Absolutely! Just click here or go to our Payment Methods Guide for specific instructions. Gifts are one-time purchases and are not recurring subscriptions. It makes a great birthday present for a friend!

  11. Does Premium Membership enable access to Titles that are listed as not available in my region?

    Unfortunately, you will be subjected to most of the same region restrictions even with a Premium Membership subscription. For a complete list of what is currently available in your area, please check out our Anime and Drama lists.

  12. Can I download the videos to my computer?

    Unfortunately we do not have the proper right to provide direct downloads of the videos we have available. So we unfortunately can not allow the videos to be downloaded to your computer.

  13. Can I watch the videos on my TV?

    Yes, you can access Crunchyroll through our Roku Channel or our Boxee Box Application which will enable people to watch Crunchyroll videos on the Boxee Box. You can also use a computer/laptop hooked up to your TV in order to the watch videos from Crunchyroll on it. We are also looking to support more set-top devices in the future.

  14. I paid for Premium Membership but I don't have access to any of the benefits that come with it, how come?

    There are a few things that could have happened here.
    • We didn't receive payment for the order. Make sure the payment was actually sent by looking at your billing statements. If we didn't receive the money, your membership subscription will automatically cancel within 10-30 days at which point you'll need to purchase a new subscription.
    • You are logged on to the wrong account. Check your Order Status page. If you don't see any recent purchases, you most likely have a different account with an active Premium Membership subscription. If you are unable to locate the account, please contact us so that we may locate the account for you.
    • An error occurred that caused your membership to deactivate. If you can verify that the money for the membership was withdrawn from your account and that you didn't cancel your membership, you will need to contact us so that we can manually fix this error.

  15. Why was I billed again when my last payment was sent less than a month ago?

    This can happen for 1 of 3 reasons.
    • You have 2 recurring membership subscriptions. You can be charged twice if you have 2 accounts that both have a recurring subscription. When this happens, you'll need to cancel the subscription on 1 of these accounts and continue using the other account.
    • We didn't receive your previous payment on time. When you use a Credit Card to as your payment method and we don't receive payment immediately, our system automatically retries the purchase a few times over the course of a 30 day period. If the payment is received within this period of time, your membership remains active and continues to automatically renew once your current month expires. The same thing happens when you pay through Paypal except there's only a 15 day grace period for the payment to be received.
    • There was a system error that caused you to be charged twice. This doesn't happen very often at all and the previous 2 reasons are MUCH more likely to happen but it can happen, so please take that into consideration before claiming there was a system error. If you are fairly certain that there was system error, please contact us so that we can take a look at it.

      You can verify whether or not you were charged twice by locating the last 3 entries for Crunchyroll. If you were only charged 3 times within the last 90 days, then you were not charged twice.

  16. Where can I find a list of the transactions I have made?

    You can see a complete list of transactions by going to your Order Status page. Though you should only be charged for the order's that say "Completed". All other status messages usually mean that we either didn't receive payment for the item.