True crime strengthened its grip on Netflix’s documentary audience in 2025, with four of the platform’s five most-watched documentaries falling within the genre. According to Digital i data, the year’s leading title, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, reached more than 50 million Netflix accounts across 20 markets.
True crime emerged as the defining force in Netflix documentary viewing in 2025. Digital i’s analysis of subscriber account reach across 20 markets — including the US, UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Japan and South Korea — found that four of Netflix’s five most-watched documentaries of the year focused on real crime stories.
Leading the ranking was Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, which reached 50.4 million accounts. The documentary explores an online deception involving a fake identity and a teenage victim, eventually revealing consequences far beyond what initially appeared to be a case of digital harassment.
Its performance also shows how far documentary viewing can now extend beyond the genre’s traditional audience, with its reach comparable to that of major scripted titles on global streaming platforms.
What were Netflix’s most-watched true crime documentaries of 2025?
American Murder: Gabby Petito ranked second with a reach of 46.2 million accounts. The documentary revisits the disappearance and death of Gabby Petito, a case that generated enormous attention across social media and international news outlets in 2021.
In third place was The Perfect Neighbor with 45.4 million accounts reached. Together, the three titles meant that Netflix’s entire documentary top three consisted of true crime productions, each reaching more than 45 million accounts.
Sean Combs: The Reckoning followed in fourth place with 41.1 million accounts. Its performance also highlights another important factor in contemporary documentary success: timing. The title arrived amid intense public and legal scrutiny surrounding Sean Combs, allowing it to connect directly with an already active global news cycle.
The only title in the top five that did not fall squarely within true crime was Trainwreck: Poop Cruise. The documentary, which revisits the 2013 Carnival Triumph cruise ship disaster that left thousands of passengers stranded at sea, reached 36.3 million accounts.
Why does true crime perform so strongly on Netflix?
Digital i’s figures suggest that the biggest true crime documentaries often benefit from audience interest that exists long before a title is released.
Cases such as Gabby Petito’s disappearance or high-profile investigations involving public figures already carry significant cultural awareness. Streaming documentaries can then provide audiences with a single destination to revisit, understand or reassess stories they have previously encountered through news coverage and social media.
Netflix’s global distribution gives those stories an additional advantage, allowing highly recognisable cases to travel across multiple territories at the same time.
The trend also extends well beyond the top five. Nine of Netflix’s ten most-watched documentaries in 2025 were either true crime or disaster-led titles, underlining the audience appetite for factual stories built around real people, major incidents and events in which something has gone dramatically wrong.
The highest-ranking documentary outside Netflix was Amazon’s Clarkson’s Farm, which reached 12.4 million accounts and ranked 42nd overall in Digital i’s data.
The scale of the difference reinforces Netflix’s position in global documentary viewing while also offering a clear indication of what audiences are choosing. In 2025, real crime, high-profile cases and extraordinary real-world events remained some of the most powerful drivers of factual entertainment on the platform.
Source: Digital i
True Crime Remains Television’s Most Powerful Documentary Genre
