Movies like By Design
The best movies like By Design are The Back-Up Plan (2010), The Kids Are All Right (2010) and Babes (2024). If By Design hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedFatherhood (2021)7.5/10 from 1,584 votes
- NewestDie My Love (2025)Released 2025
The Back-Up Plan (2010)
When Zoe tires of looking for Mr. Right, she decides to have a baby on her own. But on the day she's artificially inseminated, she meets Stan, who seems to be just who she's been searching for all her life. Now, Zoe has to figure out how to make her two life's dreams fit with each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Kids Are All Right (2010)
Two women, Nic and Jules, brought a son and daughter into the world through artificial insemination. When one of their children reaches age, both kids go behind their mothers' backs to meet with the donor. Life becomes so much more interesting when the father, two mothers and children start to become attached to each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBabes (2024)
After getting pregnant from a one-night stand, a single woman leans on her married best friend and mother of two to guide her through gestation and beyond.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Pod Generation (2023)
In a not-so-distant future, couples can share pregnancy on a more equal footing via detachable artificial wombs. While botanist Alvy has doubts about this new way of birthing babies, his love for Rachel prompts him to take a leap of faith.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaking Babies (2019)
After years of "manually" trying to conceive, John and Katie Kelly put their bodies, wallet and marriage through the ringer of modern infertility treatments.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisPrivate Life (2018)
Richard and Rachel, a couple in the throes of infertility, try to maintain their marriage as they descend deeper and deeper into the insular world of assisted reproduction and domestic adoption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLook Who's Talking (1989)
After a single, career-minded woman is left on her own to give birth to the child of a married man, she finds a new romantic chance in a cab driver. Meanwhile, the point-of-view of the newborn baby is narrated through voice-over.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFatherhood (2021)
A widowed new dad copes with doubts, fears, heartache and dirty diapers as he sets out to raise his daughter on his own. Inspired by a true story.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhat to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)
Challenges of impending parenthood turn the lives of five couples upside down. Two celebrities are unprepared for the surprise demands of pregnancy; hormones wreak havoc on a baby-crazy author, while her husband tries not to be outdone by his father, who's expecting twins with his young trophy wife; a photographer's husband isn't sure about his wife's adoption plans; a one-time hook-up results in a surprise pregnancy for rival food-truck owners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Switch (2010)
Kassie is a smart, fun-loving single woman who, despite her neurotic best friend Wally’s objections, decides it’s time to have a baby – even if it means doing it herself… with a little help from a charming sperm donor. But, unbeknownst to her, Kassie’s plans go awry because of a last-minute switch that isn’t discovered until seven years later… when Wally gets acquainted with Kassie’s cute, though slightly neurotic, son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAli Wong: Baby Cobra (2016)
Ali Wong might be seven-months pregnant, but there’s not a fetus in the world that can stop this acerbic and savage train of comedy from delivering a masterful hour of stand-up.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDelivery Man (2013)
An affable underachiever finds out he's fathered 533 children through anonymous donations to a fertility clinic 20 years ago. Now he must decide whether or not to come forward when 142 of them file a lawsuit to reveal his identity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBaby Mama (2008)
A successful, single businesswoman who dreams of having a baby discovers she is infertile and hires a working class woman to be her unlikely surrogate.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKinds of Kindness (2024)
A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPlaying It Cool (2014)
A young man meets and instantly falls in love with an engaged woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisAli Wong: Hard Knock Wife (2018)
Pregnant again, Ali Wong returns to Netflix in her second original stand-up comedy special and gets real on why having kids is not all it's cracked up to be.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYours, Mine & Ours (2005)
Admiral Frank Beardsley returns to New London to run the Coast Guard Academy, his last stop before a probable promotion to head the Guard. A widower with eight children, he runs a loving but tight ship, with charts and salutes. The kids long for a permanent home. Helen North is a free spirit, a designer whose ten children live in loving chaos, with occasional group hugs. Helen and Frank, high school sweethearts, reconnect at a reunion, and it's love at first re-sighting. They marry on the spot. Then the problems start as two sets of kids, the free spirits and the disciplined preppies, must live together. The warring factions agree to work together to end the marriage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInstant Family (2018)
When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15 year old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)
A childless couple bury a box in their backyard, containing all of their wishes for an infant. Soon, a child is born, though Timothy Green is not all that he appears.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDie My Love (2025)
After inheriting a remote Montana house, Jackson moves there from New York with his partner Grace, and the couple soon welcome a child. As Jackson becomes increasingly absent and rural isolation sets in, Grace struggles with loneliness, creative frustration, and unresolved emotional wounds. What begins as an attempt at renewal gradually turns into an intense psychological descent, placing strain on their relationship and exposing the fragile balance between love, identity, and motherhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like By Design?
The closest matches to By Design are The Back-Up Plan (2010), The Kids Are All Right (2010) and Babes (2024). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after By Design?
Start with The Back-Up Plan (2010), the closest match to By Design.
What is the highest-rated movie like By Design?
Fatherhood (2021), rated 7.5/10 by 1,584 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like By Design?
Die My Love (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like By Design?
Yes: The Back-Up Plan (2010), The Kids Are All Right (2010) and Babes (2024).
How are movies similar to By Design chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside By Design, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.