That $75 Lifetime Plex Pass is looking like a good decision by past me.
Jellyfin is so much better anyway. I used plex for years and it has steadily enshitified.
Could you explain why you feel that Jellyfin is a lot better? I’ve seen lots of folks saying it lately, but as someone with an unraid server running plex to back up and view my music and movie collections for years, I don’t get it. I’ve tried Jellyfin twice now. The most recent time was a couple of months ago. While it is good, I honestly have a hard time seeing what makes it much better than Plex. While I disagree with a number of things Plex has done, I still recommend it to friends who want a personal media server or place to rip and backup their CDs to. It’s still the easiest to setup and most intuitive imo. Am I just missing something?
The most infuriating thing about Plex for me was when they shifted to force you to start with their BS streaming service at open. I only used Plex for my personal media collection. So having to jump through a bunch of menus to get to the only thing I want to use in their app was the biggest reason to switch for me. Maybe there is a way to fix that, but I could never find one.
Jellyfin just does your personal media library and opens right up into it when the app starts. Its simpler, faster, and FOSS.
RIP Plex
Well, sounds like I have six weeks to spin up Jellyfin side-by-side with Plex to see if I can get away with not paying the $120 ransom…
Plex is the current war front. May it hold for many years
the idea of stockpiling a lifetimes AV entertainment being within normie’s grasp must have media congloms terrified. Problem is - that accessibility poses risks for us filesharers too, cause a panicked animal is an aggressive one
New USD prices as of April 29, 2025 will be:
Monthly: $6.99
Yearly: $69.99
Lifetime: $249.99
Oof I paid $75 in 2013 for lifetime lol.
I like how no one is mentioning that they removed the one time fees for their mobile apps to be able to play media at all. Also, only the server owner needs Plex Pass and anyone they share with can stream for free.
How so? My friends need to use my account or else they need to pay to watch my movie? Did that change?
Read the article
The US$75 Lifetime price has traditionally been their Black Friday deal, regardless of the usual price.
Anyone’s guess if that deal will still be a thing, given their recent behaviour, though.
Paid 99, worst investment i did till now.
Me too 🫢
I have a lifetime Plex pass.
I tried out Jellyfin last month.
Now Plex is uninstalled.
Even if we ignore the differences when it comes to matters of FOSS, cost, corporate control, privacy, etc, Jellyfin’s performance is just so much better.
Setting it up to run over https while fully self-hosted was a learning process for somebody who isn’t a web dev, but holy crap was it worth it.
I tried Jelly Fin last month based on a thread here and it was a damned dumpster fire. As bad a Plex is for remote streaming, JF is far worse for the average person.
Hard disagree. I think jellyfin is much better than Plex.
In what way? I share my server with 8 friends/family and it does everything I need it to.
Unable to set up a working server for outside of the home network. Also, the UI is terrible and didn’t organize things well.
Setting up remote access is the same for Plex and Jellyfin so I’m confused. All you need to do is to forward port 8096 or use a reverse proxy like nginx if you want a domain.
I have plex.domain.com and jellyfin.domain.com and it was the exact same process for both.
i’ve been using http://playit.gg/ to set up a simple proxy that i can share with my friends! You just forward the port that jellyfin uses and share the link (and it works for all manner of other servers)
When I tried that service recently I found that it’s incredibly slow. It’s like all the ISPs in the Philippines intentionally throttle it or something. In contrast to that, using Zerotier to connect instead gives me normal speeds.
It’s just not the same. If all you need is local access or tailscale to your instance it’s fine, sure you can cancel Plex. If you’re sharing with friends or family or like the easy access to it that doesn’t require being part of the private network. Also I like subtitles and Plex handles this way better than Jellyfin. At least last time I played with it
There were some hoops for me to jump through in order to get secure remote access working for sure. Fortunately for my family that connect remotely, it’s transparent for them and doesn’t require any kind of VPN or tunnel. They just need URL, user, and password.
And for subtitles I’m not sure what the differences are between the two, but I’ve used them plenty on jellyfin and they seemed to work well and render nicely.
https://jellyfin.org/ Great alternative to Plex!
I paid for a lifetime Plex Pass years and years ago now, I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth.
That being said, I fully expect more bullshit like this, up to and including ending my “lifetime” pass.
When that comes to pass, I’m so glad Jellyfin will be available for me to use.
Never EVER pay for lifetime subscriptions
, unless you have lawyers on retainer.I mean mine has already paid for itself
You bought a lifetime subscription. Are you dead?
No, but to pay for a regular subscription in the time I’ve had it would have cost more money
I also paid for a lifetime pass and still switched to Jellyfin last year. I find it’s quite a bit better than Plex. The UI leaves a bit to be desired, but the performance for me is way better.
I’d suggest giving it a try
Same here, the Plex app was super heavy on a lot of my devices and would slow them to a crawl. Jellyfin is lean and runs well even on my slow smart projector. It does everything I need it to and more. I also got sick of Plex trying to shove their content and rentals and streaming services down my throat. Couldn’t be happier with Jellyfin.
Lifetime pass for Plex too. A few months ago, it bubbled up an ad-filled version of a show I was watching in front of the show on my server. That is, it showed up in Continue Watching. I was briefly baffled when I started watching an ad on a show that I thought was streaming locally.
Anyway, I switched to Jellyfin. There’s some imperfections, but so far it hasn’t tried to trick me into watching ads.
That’s pretty bad, but I’m not that surprised.
This is my experience too. The web interface is usable, but a bit rough. It is a lot like early Plex web UI. The options for clients are okay on Android / Google TV but they are kinda bad on Apple TV.
Hopefully as more people discover Jellyfin interest in development of both the server and the clients will surpass Plex.
I appreciate what Plex has offered for free for many years now, and I was once a subscriber, but I don’t love it anymore because I’m looking for the straightest path to watching my library on my devices. Jellyfin delivers this better most of the time.
I don’t know what the Apple TV app is like, but I would love if the Android and Roku TV apps were the same as the web and mobile application.
At this point I believe the server is superior to Plex, at least on my experience. Much snappier and streams flawlessly
there is no official apple tv app.
Performance has been better for me too. I keep both installed on my media server, but I hope one day that I can easily ditch plex
Does Jellyfin have remote play? I’ve had a lifetime PP for years now, but most of my users don’t. I will be installing Jellyfin tomorrow to run parallel until it can be a full replacement, or just forever.
I just was asking someone on here a few weeks back if switching off Plex while already having a PP was worth it. I think the gist was no rush since it’s working, but this news is my canary.
You can enable remote access through firewall rules, port fwding etc but I haven’t done that yet. There’s a service called tailscale that allows remote access to almost any app externally, works really well. Only drawback is that if you’re on mobile, the tailscale app needs to be running for access to work
I use tailscale and nzb360 to remotely access my arr suite and Plex, so I’m at least a bit familiar with it. Getting my other users setup with it might be a bit tougher, but not impossible. The fact that it’s doable is a good enough jumping off point.
Apple tv has a tailscale client, as does android. Both also have jellyfin clients.
I don’t think roku has either.
Roku can die in a fire, so that’s fine. I’ll need to do a little messing around and see what’s up.
As long as you have PP, users streaming remotely from your server can do so without PP (or the mobile app unlock). The client user charge is only for accessing servers that don’t have PP. Still insane they’re charging anything at all for streaming private content from a private server to a private client though.
Thank god for jellyfin. I have a feeling plex would have gone a lot harder with this update if there was no competition.
I missed that part of the article and had a user point it out. Still really dumb of Plex to charge more for something that has little overhead for them, greedy assholes.
You have to set it up yourself. It does not have remote access through someone else’s servers like Emby and Plex do.
“We regret to inform you that your Lifetime Pass has died in a restructuring related accident. Consider easing your loss by browsing our other pass options.”
What they’re actually gonna do is release Plex 2 or something and then just invalidate all the old lifetime licenses, as they were for Plex and not Plex 2
Wish they had a client for PS5.
Unfortunately, Sony seems to be really hostile towards allowing most any video player apps on the PS5. They specifically went out of their way to remove DLNA support, and they only just allowed a DLNA-enabled video player on the store 7 months ago… and it’s subscription based.
I am in the same exact boat. The PS5 is the media machine for us upstairs. I would switch to jellyfin if there was a PS5 client. Glad I’m not alone on this.
Does it not have a web browser?
That’s the biggest reason I haven’t switched to Jellyfin.
Jellyfin is free. Your own domain is like $10 a year or less.
Tailscale is also free.
Possibly a bit annoying for family members used to just logging in though. It’s an extra step.
There’s always other free options like duckdns, etc.
Duckdns is not stable enough. You’ll have downtime multiple times a year.
It’s a free service, I think that’s fair.
I didn’t say it wasn’t, but it does not make for an acceptable user experience when you are hosting things for friends and family. Most people expect web services to just work.
I felt it was worth people knowing before setting it up. Cloudflare is also free and all you have to do is pay yearly for a domain. It also has much better uptime.
If you don’t mind connecting directly with your IP address, you don’t even have to pay a domain. Been doing this for around 2 years
Just shared in another comment, instead of doing this you can also use http://playit.gg/ to create a proxy without requiring an account and also not requiring port forwarding. They lease you a domain name, too
Thanks!
I installed Plex a couple years ago and when I found I actually had to sign into their servers to access my own content it was immediately uninstalled. It was only a matter of time before they pulled this kind of shit.
you can disable authentication on your local network.
This might be a good time to remind everyone that Jellyfin is open source, free (as in beer) and is, at this point, a better media streamer than Plex. No fees, no ads, no constant pushing of their streaming content, and still has the watch together feature that Plex went and removed.
TBH Plex is years ahead on maturity, their dev team is excellent, unfortunately it seems like enshittification has begun for them.
Support Jellyfin not because it’s better, but because it’s open source and it puts users and tech first. Don’t expect it to beat Plex’s performance, quality, or cross-platform availability yet, but expect it to become better as more people donate or get involved.
What’s better, exactly?
I switched years ago from Plex to Jellyfin, and while the UI wasn’t quite as nice, everything else is better.
And I don’t have to pay to use HW transcoding on my own hardware…Honestly, I don’t really understand how people prefer the Plex UI to Jellyfin. No shade, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Plex is incredibly cluttered and busy. Jellyfin is simple and clean. I like the latter a lot more.
Jellyfin looks pretty bad on an iPad. Subtitles setting keep getting reset on their own, it doesn’t understand basic keyboard controls (spacebar to pause), the UI is overall tiny. Oftentimes it will forget to save the spot where I finished watching and on the next launch will happily play the movie from beginning.
Was this with the first party Jellyfin app or with Swiftfin?
If it was with the first party app, I’d definitely recommend giving Swiftfin a try.
First party app, yes. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll give swiftfin a try.
Plexamp. Genuinely my favorite audio player since Winamp.
There’s ‘finamp’ for jellyfin which I really like so far.
I haven’t used plexamp though, so I can’t vouch for it as an alternative.
For Android users there’s Symfonium which I find really great
The reason I’m not switching yet, is that there’s no federated auth. If they had that, I’d switch in a heartbeat.
Simple auth was honestly one of the upsides for me.
Plex claims to have an offline mode, but I could never got it to work, for some reason.
And I got pissed off one too many times when my Internet went down and I couldn’t watch anything from the NAS a few meters away…Same here. I have it installed, but I’m resistant to managing other people’s passwords.
I cannot upvote this enough. “Just migrate to X, it’s every bit as good!” when end users know it’s not is a disingenuous argument and even if they don’t have the technical know-how to explain exactly why they feel this way, they’ll feel the deception. It only reinforces a growing distrust in tech.
The argument has to be made honestly. It’s not quite as good, but almost. Those few things you’ll miss will require an adjustment, but the overall value (a lot of times just literally, it costs less!) will become evident.
I know we’re all Linux nerds here and enthused to get people onboard, but the battle right now we’re facing is one of trust and security and must be grounded in those notions because while great strides have been made in convenience and accessibility, big corps will always be able to bankroll themselves over those points.
Yeah, my problem with it is that it’s always something. I’ve been giving it a go about once a year since they forked from Emby and everytime something has made me drop it.
If I’m having problems with it the handful of times I go to watch something using it, the people I share with DEFINITELY would and now I have to handle their auth crap myself as well.
I’ll probably prioritize just keeping a server going side by side now for a lot longer than a month or two at a time and try to find solutions to my problems. it’s never really been a priority before since Plex worked, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now that the enshittification is in full swing and now I need to make sure I’m ahead of it.
Blah, this sucks.
The only thing Plex has on Jellyfin are client apps. Sever-side… Jellyfin hands down. I was super surprised to see av1 transcoding support… In Plex we JUST got HEVC.
I’m not hating on Plex by any means, but when I have an issue with Plex, Jellyfin picks up the slack. I’ll be using Jellyfin full time after the ATV app re-write.
I am curious, though, what is it that makes you think Jellyfin’s software is inferior? Since I’ve been following, Jellyfin has released new features long before Plex.
I need client side apps and easily sharing libraries with remote friends. Both are pretty hard to give up and not quite there yet.
Jellyfin has native apps for Android, Android TV and iOS.
Does Plex offer native apps (that aren’t just stripped down browsers) for more platforms?
I’ve since switched to jellyfin, but I initially chose plex because it was the only option with a client for Tizen. It certainly felt native but very well could just be a web app.
What’s wrong with progressive web apps tho? If every device has a browser why bother writing native code for an app that doesn’t need it? A single code stream for numerous platforms is a win if you ask me.
Not sure whether they are stripped browser versions, but I can use plex on ps4, xbox. I use my ps4 for all my streaming so jellyfin not being in there means more annoyance for me. I have Jellyfin setup side by side with plex, accessing the same content and Plex displays it all properly while jellyfish does funky shit like displaying multiple entries for a single show (it had nearly 50 entries until I manually reworked a ton of filename shit), or fucking up and showing box art and a title for a porn movie instead of the actual movie which was Princess Mononoke. There may be settings that help with this buried somewhere but for now it’s definitely more of a pain to use.
Jellyfin works fine on PS4, I use it all the time. Just have to open it in the browser.
So you open the ps4 browser and use the controller to type in the address each time? Sounds like a pain in the dick honestly.
Atm Xbox is my most reliable media player. PlayStation isn’t quite there, but would be a nice to have. My parents aren’t very tech literate and they use their smart TV/cable box. I have a friend with an older Roku/smart stick that’s incompatible. Have they added an app for Apple TV yet?
There is an app, but it’s not receiving updates at the moment. They’re doing a complete re-write. The iOS app has been released, and it’s fantastic. The Infuse app is a great band-aid for the time being.
LDAP can be used, which isn’t bad. There are plenty of options. It’ll never be as easy as letting a 3rd party handle it for you. But, that’s a pro in my book.
I agree the client side apps are taking some time, but the developers are absolute gems.
Plexamp is phenomenal. To my knowledge, Jellyfin doesn’t have anything remotely comparable.
Finamp is great.
Plexamp is a dandy. Managing music locally is pretty cumbersome, so it hasn’t bothered me much. There are a few decent Jellyfin music apps, but nothing quite as polished. Manet looks promising on iOS, but I haven’t tried it yet. Haven’t jumped back to GrapheneOS quite yet, so I’m a little out of the loop there.
Its weird how people complain more with the current state of plex compared to if they just required a plex pass for everything.
My ONLY complaints are that they have new features enabled by default, and that it doesn’t work well if the internet breaks
The is just better rhetoric gets a bit frustrating tbh, it’s a great bit of software do not get me wrong, but sure still has a lot of issues with more exotic codecs and various colour space conversions. Among some other tech issues
free (as in beer)
wut
There are 2 types of “free”. Liberty, and price. “Free as in beer” means they mean the price version of the word. It’s a really old saying now.
How else would they continue developing their social features that no one fucking asked for?
Meanwhile they remove the social features that people DO like and use like watch together
People gotta justify their jobs!
There’s enough work without them going all social.
Todays word of the day is…Enshitification!
That’s the word of this decade.
i’ve been struggling with what i thought was depression/anhedonia for a few years now. after multiple psychiatrists and meds accomplishing nothing i am starting to think i’m chemically just fine; the world is actually going to shit around me.
… with 3 Ts
I paid for a lifetime membership to Plex in 2012–$75. I stopped using it around 2015, mostly because I hated that I didn’t have access to software running on my server, meant to serve my media, without an internet connection. I knew that meant worse was coming in the future.
I don’t regret switching to Jellyfin.
You can access locally when the internet is down. You just need to set the login bypass for the local network. IMO it’s kinda a stupid step needed in setup but it is available.
I’m not sure I understand the need for charging to play media on a private server when not on the local network. Why is this no longer going to be free? I’m glad I bought a lifetime pass many many years back but I definitely wouldn’t pay for Plex nowadays with alternatives being comparable. What a silly choice they made~
I’m not defending them because it’s a shit move, but they clearly understand the most valuable feature is not their ad-ridden free content but rather the original value prop of the service to make it easy to share personal media with small groups of friends.
It reeks of “we’re routing your traffic through our own servers to check your media for piracy” to me.
Why would they check for piracy when it’s not them you’re pirating from and stopping piracy would remove the most popular use case of their product?
They do have a proxy service, but it is optional. I have it disabled because my server is faster.
I could see the proxy slipping behind a paywall as that feature has costs, but web accessibility? That’s basic function of a video server.
The proxy service is also encrypted end to end
Edit: this relies on the Plex system being secure/nice though.
