Backloggd and HowLongToBeat are the two names that come up every time someone asks for a game tracker. They get compared constantly, but they are built for different jobs: one is a social diary of what you play, the other is a database of how long games take to finish. Here is an honest breakdown of what each does well, where they fall short, and how to decide.
What HowLongToBeat does best
HowLongToBeat (HLTB) answers one question better than anyone: how many hours will this game take? Every game page shows three crowdsourced estimates — Main Story, Main + Extras and Completionist — built from times submitted by players over more than a decade.
- Completion times you can trust: popular games have thousands of submissions, so the averages are solid. Niche games with few reports can be off.
- Official Steam sync: you can import your Steam library from your profile settings, and HLTB shows estimated hours next to every game you own. The sync is one-way: it reads your library, nothing more.
- Backlog math: once your collection is in, you can see the total hours your backlog represents — a sobering number for most of us.
Where it falls short: the times are community averages, not your own tracked hours. The logging and social side works, but feels utilitarian — it is a database first, a tracker second.
What Backloggd does best
Backloggd is Letterboxd for games. It is built around the social side of playing: you log games, rate them with half-stars, write short reviews, keep a play journal, build lists and follow friends to see what they think.
- The social layer is genuinely good: activity feeds, likes on reviews, and lists that are fun to browse.
- Clean logging: statuses like Playing, Backlog, Wishlist and Completed, plus a journal of play sessions.
- Big database: it runs on IGDB, so almost everything is searchable.
The big catch: Backloggd has no Steam import. No PSN, Xbox or Epic either — every game goes in manually, one at a time. Storefront import has been a requested feature since 2022 and still has not shipped. It also shows no playtime estimates: if you want to know how long a game takes, you will end up on HLTB anyway.
Head-to-head
- Completion times: HowLongToBeat, clearly. Backloggd does not have them.
- Steam import: HowLongToBeat has an official sync. Backloggd is fully manual.
- Reviews and social: Backloggd, clearly. Ratings, reviews and friends are its core.
- Lists: both do lists well; Backloggd lists are more social, HLTB lists more practical.
- Price: both are free.
So which one should you use?
Pick HowLongToBeat if your main problem is deciding what fits your time: you want hour estimates, backlog totals and a quick Steam import.
Pick Backloggd if your main pleasure is the diary: rating games, writing short reviews and following friends.
In practice, a lot of players end up running both — HLTB for the hours, Backloggd for the social log. That split is the real weakness of this matchup: neither tool covers the whole job on its own.
If you want both jobs in one tracker
Full disclosure: this is the WListDB blog, so judge accordingly. We built WListDB precisely because we kept juggling two tabs. It is free and combines the two halves:
- Steam import in one click — your whole library lands with playtime data attached, like the HLTB sync but with statuses ready for backlog triage.
- Main Story / Main + Extras / Completionist times on every game page, plus release dates and a hype system for upcoming games.
- Logs, ratings, reviews and shareable lists — the Backloggd side of the job.
- A Windows app that tracks your playtime automatically while you play, across Steam, Epic, GOG, Xbox and more — your real hours, not just community averages.
Import your Steam library into WListDB and see your backlog with real numbers in about a minute.
Want deeper dives? We wrote honest head-to-heads against each: WListDB vs Backloggd and WListDB vs HowLongToBeat.