How To Get a Crunchyroll Guest Pass

Jamie Read more June 2, 2019

If you love anime or Asian TV, chances are you have heard of Crunchyroll. It’s a premium streaming service that offers anime and imported TV shows as well as simulcast series. (With a little effort, you can even download videos from Crunchyroll.) It is one of the most popular anime and manga streaming platforms around right now. But it does cost money.

If you’re not in a position to pay, there is always the Crunchyroll guest pass. The Crunchyroll guest pass is an incentive that they offer to premium users. It allows users to invite a friend to check out the site for free. Once per month, a premium account should be credited with a guest pass code that the user can share. When you receive the code, you can enter it into the Crunchyroll guest pass page and receive 48 hours of free access to Crunchyroll’s premium service. You can see how this would work to Crunchyroll’s advantage as a marketing gimmick, giving people a glimpse of the service.

The trouble with this system (from the user’s perspective) is that it is a little intermittent. I know a couple of people who are members and they both report that some months they get a Crunchyroll guest pass to share and some months they don’t.

Crunchyroll says this about guest passes:

“Guest Passes are a complimentary service, not a guaranteed part of the Premium offering, and are not currently supported. We are evaluating whether or not to continue providing them as a service. We apologize, but we do not provide backlogged passes. If you would occasionally like to share Crunchyroll Premium Membership with a friend for two days, please contact us using the link below with the username or login email of the friend, and we can set them up.”

The Crunchyroll Guest Pass

Crunchyroll isn’t that expensive at $6.95 a month. Unfortunately, if you’re adding it on top of Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and game subscriptions, it all starts to add up to a lot. The site does have one of the largest legal anime and manga libraries around, though, so is well worth the investment if you have the spare cash. Otherwise, you can find a Crunchyroll guest pass quite easily.

A Crunchyroll guest pass is not a full premium account and does have limits. They are time limited to 48 hours and volume limited to 10 passes per six month period. So if you set up a free account and use a guest pass, you have to binge over a 48 hour period. Since you can only use up to 10 passes every six months, you’re basically going to binge shows every few weeks and then wait a while to do it again.

How to get a Crunchyroll guest pass

The best place I have found to get a Crunchyroll guest pass is from a friend who subscribes to the site. This is how Crunchyroll wants it to work, after all–essentially spreading their service through word-of-mouth. That personal connection should guarantee a pass at some point or another depending on how many other friends want one. If you don’t know anyone who is a premium member, there are a couple of other ways to get a pass.

Reddit Weekly Guest Pass MegaThread

The Reddit Weekly Guest Pass MegaThread is a good way to grab a Crunchyroll guest pass. You’ll find the thread every Thursday on the Crunchyroll subreddit. The downside is that you have to be quick to take advantage of it. Users post guest pass codes directly in the thread, meaning any reader can use them right away. It may take a little trial and error to find an unclaimed one. At the time of writing, however there are plenty of codes being offered.

Anime forums

Crunchyroll has its own forum with its own Official Guest Pass Thread. Again, guest pass codes are posted publicly so it will take a few tries to find one that works. Currently, there are dozens of pages to this thread, with the latest entry only a few hours old. If the thread is updated regularly, you should find a pass here easily.

Otherwise there are dozens of other anime forums around. Some are bound to have their own version of the Crunchyroll guest pass thread. A little digging on search engines or online fan communities might uncover hidden treasure.

Facebook

Facebook is a good source of Crunchyroll guest passes, too. Groups like Anime Fanatics International and Anime Monk have been known to feature passes. Even if they don’t appear in posts, engaging with other users and discussing Crunchyroll could see you being offered a pass if one comes up. (Ultimately, this circles back to our first strategy: having a friend with a Crunchyroll subscription. If you don’t have any friends like that, it can’t hurt to make more friends who share your interest in anime!)

There are dozens, if not hundreds of other anime groups on Facebook and other social networks. Do a little research, reach out and you never know what you might find!

The Crunchyroll guest pass system seems a little hit and miss and it’s not guaranteed. If you don’t want a guest pass, you can sign up for an account and get 14 days free access anyway. With the number of disposable emails around, this may be a better bet than a guest pass. If you like it, you’ll probably want to find the money for your own premium account–and then you can complete the circle of life by handing out guest passes of your own!

Do you know of any other good sources of Crunchyroll guest passes? Have any to spare? Tell us about it below if you do!