We make Slonke, so read this knowing that. To keep ourselves honest, this page says plainly where Teleparty is the better pick, because it sometimes is.
Teleparty fits groups. It has no hard cap on party size, its free tier covers more platforms reliably, and if a text sidebar is all the chat you need, it costs nothing. Slonke fits exactly two people who want to see and hear each other while they watch, without paying for it or creating accounts. If your watch party is a date, that difference decides everything.
| Slonke | Teleparty | |
|---|---|---|
| Voice/video built in | Yes, free | Premium only, $3.99/mo; only paying users can turn on camera or mic |
| Price | Free | Free tier (text chat); Premium $3.99/mo or $47.88/yr |
| Account required | No | No for basic text chat; yes for Premium |
| Group size | 2, by design | No hard cap |
| Platforms | Netflix, YouTube, JioHotstar (beta), more rolling out | Netflix, YouTube, Prime, Disney+, Max, Hotstar and more free; Crunchyroll, Paramount+ on Premium |
| Privacy | No accounts, no tracking; calls P2P and encrypted | Standard account-based service |
| Browsers | Desktop Chrome | Chrome, Edge, Opera; Android app |
The complaint is almost always the same one: the talking costs money. Teleparty's free tier gives you synced playback and a text sidebar, and typing reactions at someone during a movie stopped feeling social around 2015. Voice and video exist, but behind a $3.99 a month subscription, and the paywall has a strange shape: only paying users can turn on a camera or mic, while free users in the same party just receive. One person pays and performs, the other watches them like television.
So most Teleparty sessions grow a second app. Discord or a phone call runs next to the movie for the actual conversation, and now you're maintaining two tools, two volume levels and an echo problem to do one thing. The sync itself is solid. People don't leave because it drifts, they leave because the social half of a watch party is sold separately.
Anything bigger than two. Slonke is hard-capped at a two-person party on purpose, so a five-person watch night is Teleparty territory, full stop. Its free platform coverage is also wider and more battle-tested today: Prime Video, Disney+ and Max work reliably on Teleparty, while Slonke's support beyond Netflix and YouTube is still beta or rolling out. And Teleparty runs on Edge and Opera with an Android app besides, where Slonke lives in desktop Chrome. If any of that describes your setup, use Teleparty and don't look back.
Slonke is capped at two people, and everything follows from that. The voice and video call is built in and free, because for two people the talking is the point, and it felt wrong charging couples for it. There is nothing to sign up for on either side: one person opens a video and sends a link, the other clicks it. The call runs peer-to-peer and encrypted, so movie night doesn't route through anyone's server, and there are games in the chat for the slow parts of the movie. The group features you'd be paying for elsewhere are features a couple never uses.
Group of friends across platforms and browsers: use Teleparty, it earned its default status. You and your person: add Slonke to Chrome and send one link.
We tested the whole field, including the tools that are quietly dead, in our Teleparty alternatives roundup.