FeSe 0.5 Te 0.5 thin films were grown by pulsed laser deposition on CaF 2 , LaAlO 3 and MgO substrates and structurally and electro-magnetically characterized in order to study the influence of the substrate on their transport properties. The in-plane lattice mismatch between FeSe 0.5 Te 0.5 bulk and the substrates shows no influence on the lattice parameters of the films, whereas the type of substrates affects the crystalline quality of the films and, therefore, the superconducting properties. The film on MgO showed an extra peak in the angular dependence of critical current density J c (θ) at θ = 180° (H || c), which arises from c-axis defects as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. In contrast, no J c (θ) peaks for H || c were observed in films on CaF 2 and LaAlO 3 . J c (θ) can be scaled successfully for both films without c-axis correlated defects by the anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau (AGL) approach with appropriate anisotropy ratio γ J . The scaling parameter γ J is decreasing with decreasing temperature, which is different from what we observed in FeSe 0.5 Te 0.5 films on Fe-buffered MgO substrates.