The 15 Best Animated Movies Streaming in 2025

Animation has never been more diverse or more available than it is right now. Between Pixar’s emotional epics, Studio Ghibli’s entire catalog on Max, and Netflix investing heavily in original animated features, every major streaming platform has something worth watching. Here are the 15 best animated movies you can stream today, covering everything from family favorites to films that will make adults cry.

How We Selected: We examined options using full-season viewing, critical analysis, and production quality assessment. Factors in our assessment included thematic depth, pacing consistency, production values. Brands featured did not pay for or influence their inclusion.

The Top Tier

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Netflix) remains the gold standard for what animated filmmaking can achieve. The sequel to the Oscar-winning Into the Spider-Verse is visually dazzling, combining multiple animation styles into a coherent whole that looks like nothing else in cinema. Miles Morales faces a multiverse-spanning conflict that is both a thrilling action movie and a genuine story about a teenager fighting for the right to make his own choices. The 140-minute runtime flies by.

Inside Out 2 (Disney Plus) is Pixar’s triumphant comeback, earning over $1.6 billion worldwide and proving the studio still understands human emotion better than anyone. The sequel introduces Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui as Riley enters her teenage years, and Maya Hawke’s voice work as Anxiety is the standout performance. Read our full Inside Out 2 review for more details.

Spirited Away (Max) is widely regarded as Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece. The story of 10-year-old Chihiro navigating a spirit world bathhouse is both beautiful and frightening, packed with imagery that stays with you for decades. Max hosts the entire Studio Ghibli library, making it the essential platform for animation fans.

The Boy and the Heron (Max) is Miyazaki’s latest and possibly final film. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and is a deeply personal, often surreal meditation on grief, creativity, and legacy. It demands patience and rewards it generously.

Modern Classics Available Now

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Peacock) shocked everyone by being one of the best animated films in years. The DreamWorks sequel reinvents its visual style with a painterly, storybook aesthetic and gives Puss a surprisingly emotional arc about confronting mortality. The wolf villain, Death himself, is genuinely intimidating in ways animated antagonists rarely achieve.

Nimona (Netflix) is the scrappy underdog that almost never got made. After Blue Sky Studios shut down, Netflix picked up this adaptation of ND Stevenson’s graphic novel about a shapeshifting punk teenager who teams up with a disgraced knight. It is funny, heartfelt, and has a gorgeous art style that mixes medieval and futuristic elements.

Elemental (Disney Plus) was initially considered a box office disappointment for Pixar but found a massive audience on streaming. The love story between fire and water elements in a city inspired by immigrant neighborhoods is visually inventive, and the central romance between Ember and Wade is one of Pixar’s most charming.

Suzume (Crunchyroll) is Makoto Shinkai’s follow-up to Weathering With You. A teenager discovers doors that release catastrophic energy and must travel across Japan to close them. Shinkai’s animation of natural landscapes remains unmatched, and the emotional core about processing the 2011 earthquake hits hard.

Hidden Gems Worth Finding

Robot Dreams (Various platforms) is a dialogue-free Spanish animated film about a dog and his robot companion in 1980s New York City. Nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, it tells a story about friendship and loss that will quietly devastate you. The New York setting is rendered beautifully, soundtracked by Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September.”

The Wild Robot (Peacock) adapts Peter Brown’s beloved children’s book about a robot named Roz who washes ashore on an uninhabited island and must learn to survive alongside the local wildlife. Lupita Nyong’o voices Roz, and the film balances ecological themes with a genuinely moving story about found family.

Kpop Demon Hunters (Netflix) became a massive surprise hit in 2025, blending K-pop culture with supernatural action in a way that should not work but absolutely does. It became Netflix’s most-watched animated film and spent months in the platform’s global top 10.

My Father’s Dragon (Netflix) is a charming, gentler option based on Ruth Stiles Gannett’s classic book. A boy runs away to an island to rescue a baby dragon, and the warm animation style is ideal for younger viewers who are not ready for the intensity of Spider-Verse.

Classic Animation on Streaming

Ratatouille (Disney Plus) holds up perfectly. Brad Bird’s Pixar film about a rat who wants to cook in a Parisian restaurant is funny, beautiful, and features one of the greatest final scenes in animation history. Anton Ego’s review monologue remains Pixar’s single finest piece of writing.

The Iron Giant (Max) is Brad Bird’s other masterpiece, a Cold War-era story about a boy who befriends a giant robot from outer space. It flopped in theaters in 1999 but has become one of the most beloved animated films ever made. “I am not a gun” still devastates.

Princess Mononoke (Max) is Miyazaki’s most ambitious environmental epic, pitting humans against forest gods in feudal Japan. The action sequences are breathtaking, and the film refuses to offer easy answers about the conflict between progress and nature.

Where to Start

If you have not explored animation beyond the usual Pixar and Disney releases, start with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for sheer visual spectacle, then move to Spirited Away for something quieter and deeper. For more film recommendations, check out our guide to the best sci-fi movies streaming in 2025 and our complete streaming device setup guide to make sure you are getting the best picture quality for these visually stunning films.