| Method | Data scope | Effort | Legal for commercial | |--------|-----------|--------|----------------------| | IMDb official datasets | Basic + ratings | Medium | ❌ No | | OMDb API | Enriched | Low | ✅ Yes (with key) | | Manual export | Very small | Low | ✅ Yes | | Scraping | Full | High (risky) | ❌ No |
Official free data is released as a series of compressed tab-separated-values (TSV) files that are refreshed daily. Direct Downloads : Files like title.basics.tsv.gz name.basics.tsv.gz can be retrieved at datasets.imdbws.com Third-Party Repositories : Sites like IEEE DataPort imdb database free
Approximately 10–15 GB compressed, 50–70 GB uncompressed for all TSV files (as of 2025). | Method | Data scope | Effort |
SELECT primaryTitle, averageRating, numVotes FROM title_basics t JOIN title_ratings r ON t.tconst = r.tconst WHERE titleType = 'movie' AND numVotes >= 100000 ORDER BY averageRating DESC LIMIT 10; imdb database free