Viki and Viu are the closest licensed apps like Loklok. Both carry Korean, Chinese and Thai series with volunteer or professional subtitles, both run a free ad-supported tier, and both are published by companies you can look up in about a minute.
Almost every list answering this search hands you Netflix, Prime Video and Hulu. That advice ignores who is asking. Someone typing this into Google lost a free app that played Asian dramas with English and Tagalog subs and let them download episodes before a commute. A subscription service with a Western catalogue is not a replacement for that; it is a different product with a different job.
The trickier part is that several apps carrying the Loklok name today are not the app people remember.
Where the Loklok app went
Users in r/loklokph report that Loklok disappeared from the iOS App Store, and the Play listings carrying its name today resolve to developers with no visible connection to the original. The domain loklok.com has become an unrelated user-created film platform.
Users noticed the disappearance before any announcement did. In r/loklokph, the subreddit built around the app’s Philippine audience, threads from April 2026 onward read like a support queue with no support staff.
“Unfortunately, Loklok has been removed from the App Store. I tried LokTV and KuuTV but they were mostly unresponsive. I can’t afford Netflix for now and those free sites have a lot of pop-up ads that take you God knows where. Help a lady right here! Thanks xoxo.”
– r/loklokph, April 2026 (4 upvotes)
Meanwhile a listing titled Loklok：HD Movie&TV sits on Google Play with more than five million downloads and about 50,700 reviews at 4.5 stars. It is published by a developer called Easevibe Dev, it carries ads and in-app purchases, and its description talks about movies, series and short dramas at 1080p. What the description never does is mention Loklok. Scroll the whole listing and the brand appears in the title and nowhere in the text.
That is the pattern to understand before you install anything.
Check the package ID before you install
Every Google Play listing carries a package identifier, and it appears in the URL after id=. Read it before installing an app that borrows a familiar name, because the title on the icon is the one field a copycat can set freely.
The Play listing for Loklok：HD Movie&TV resolves to com.risa.umbra. Nothing in that string points back to the brand printed on the icon, and a package name is not something a developer changes casually, because changing it publishes a brand new app and throws away every install and review attached to the old one. An identifier that has no relationship to the name above it is usually a sign the name was attached later.
Compare it with the ones that hold up. Viki resolves to com.viki.android, Viu to com.viu.phone, iQIYI to com.iqiyi.i18n. WeTV looks odd at first glance, since its listed developer reads as Image Future, which tells you very little. Then you read the identifier, com.tencent.qqlivei18n, and the app sits inside Tencent’s own namespace. The publisher field was ambiguous and the identifier settled it.
HiTV sits in between. It resolves to com.hitv.venom, so the brand is at least present, but the developer name reads Super drama world and traces to no company you can look up, write to, or hold responsible when the app stops working.
Which brings up the churn that made people search for alternatives in the first place. A free streaming app that keeps interrupting playback with an update prompt, and points you at a download link outside the store, is how most users end up on a lookalike they never chose.
“Got this message a couple of times. I downloaded whichever newer app was working at that time and I didn’t like it. I tried the old app a few days later and it started working again without the warnings to update. Don’t delete your old app.”
– r/loklokph, July 2026 (1 upvotes)
This check has one clear limit: it only works on Android. iPhone owners searching for apps like Loklok for iPhone keep coming up empty because the apps in question were never approved for the App Store, and there is no listing to inspect. On iOS the licensed options below are close to the entire menu.
The licensed apps like Loklok that come closest
Five apps hold large Asian drama catalogues, run a free ad-supported tier, and offer offline downloads on their paid plans. Viki and Viu overlap most directly with what Loklok was used for.
Viki
Published by Viki, Inc, a Rakuten subsidiary, with over 100 million downloads and a 3.8 rating from roughly 1.14 million reviews. Its subtitles are the draw. Volunteer teams translate into dozens of languages, which is why obscure Thai and Taiwanese titles turn up here with English subs before they appear anywhere paid.
The free tier plays with ads and caps you at 480p, a limit Viki states plainly on its own subscription page. Paying removes the ads, raises the quality, and adds casting to Chromecast, Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku.
Viu
Run by PCCW OTT (Hong Kong) Limited, 50 million-plus downloads, 4.0 stars from about 199,000 reviews. Viu is the strongest fit for viewers in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, with fast subtitle turnaround on Korean releases and local-language dubs in several markets.
Region locking is its weakness, and it is stricter than most. Opening Viu’s Philippine subscription page from an unsupported country returns a flat refusal rather than a signup form: “Sorry, this service is not available in your country yet.” Check availability where you live before you plan around it.
iQIYI
If you came to Loklok for C-dramas, historical epics or BL series, this is the closest match on catalogue alone, and much of it plays free with ads before any paywall appears. The listing carries 100 million-plus downloads and 4.8 stars from around 1.47 million reviews, the highest rating of any licensed app here.
WeTV
Tencent’s international app overlaps heavily with iQIYI on Chinese titles and adds Thai and Indonesian originals, at 100 million-plus downloads and 3.6 stars from roughly 614,000 reviews. That lower rating reflects an aggressive VIP paywall on new episodes more than it reflects the catalogue.
Bilibili
Worth installing for one reason: anime and Chinese animation, where it is stronger than the four above combined. 100 million-plus downloads, 4.5 stars from about 870,000 reviews, published under BALABOOM PTE. LTD.
Anyone who watched Loklok on a television has a smaller shortlist. Viki is the safest bet, since it names Chromecast, Android TV, Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku and smart TVs on its own subscription page, though casting sits behind the paid pass. WeTV ships a separate TV edition and advertises it at the top of its store listing. For the rest, check the store on the television itself before assuming a phone app has a big-screen twin, because several of these publish only a handset build.
If your viewing was never Asian-specific, the free ad-supported Western services fill that gap better. Tubi carries 100 million-plus downloads at 4.5 stars from 2.54 million reviews, Pluto TV runs a similar model with live channels, and MX Player, now owned by Amazon, sits at more than a billion downloads and doubles as a capable local video player for files you already have.
What Reddit recommends, and what it costs you
Community threads answer this question with a different list: HiTV, MovieBox, Onstream, HDObox, Stremio, and aggregator wikis such as FMHY. These play far more for free than any licensed app, and the price shows up as ad networks, broken links and no one to complain to.
Stremio deserves separating from the rest. The player is open-source, sits on Google Play with 10 million-plus downloads at 4.3 stars, and does nothing questionable on its own. Its legal status depends entirely on which community add-ons you attach to it, a distinction that gets flattened in most recommendation threads.
One last note on ratings, since they are the number people check first. HiTV holds 4.8 stars, matching iQIYI and beating Viki by a full point. A star rating measures how little an app asks of you, not what rights it holds to the content it plays. Free and unpaywalled will always score better than licensed and metered, and the score tells you nothing about which one still works next month.
FAQ
What app is similar to Loklok?
Viki and Viu are the nearest licensed matches, both free with ads and both heavy on Korean, Chinese and Thai drama. iQIYI goes deeper on Chinese titles, and Bilibili covers anime.
Is Loklok legal or illegal?
Loklok streamed studio films and series it showed no evidence of licensing, which is why official stores stopped carrying it. Operating such a service and watching it carry different legal exposure, and the rules on personal viewing vary by country. What is certain is that the app can no longer be verified through normal store channels, so nobody is accountable for what a given build contains.
Is LokTV the same as Loklok?
No. LokTV is a separate app that adopted a similar name after Loklok became hard to find, and Reddit users trying it in April 2026 described it as mostly unresponsive. The same applies to KuuTV and the other near-name apps that appeared in the same window.
What app is Loklok now?
Two unrelated things share the name. A Google Play listing called Loklok：HD Movie&TV is published by Easevibe Dev under the identifier com.risa.umbra, and the website loklok.com is now a platform for user-created film content. Neither is a continuation of the streaming app that built the r/loklokph community.
Pick by what you lost
Work backwards from the feature you miss, not from a ranking. Loklok did several jobs at once, and no replacement does all of them, so the choice comes down to which job mattered most in your own viewing.
- Korean and Thai series with fast subs: Viki, then Viu
- Chinese dramas and historical series: iQIYI, then WeTV
- Anime and donghua: Bilibili
- A big free catalogue with no Asian focus: Tubi or Pluto TV
- Offline downloads for a commute: any of the five, on the paid tier
You cannot inspect a catalogue before you install. You can inspect who signed the app, and that takes about twenty seconds on the store listing.
