Plex’s price hikes prove I was right to switch to Jellyfin
2026-05-11 05:43 UTC
Replies (40)
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@TroublesomeTalker@feddit.uk 2026-05-11 06:42
It's not really about cost for me. Accounts in control of someone else and increased fees to use my own hardware can take a long walk off a short pier.
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@androidul@lemmy.world 2026-05-11 07:29
I started selfhosting just because throwing cash on subscriptions at big corpos is not feasible since subs are increasing on a year-on-year basis. To my mind, if I’m going to self-host to yet again pay sub prices defeats the sole purpose of selfhosting. That money you can pocket and invest in your own hardware for spare parts, upgrades & the like
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@vithigar@lemmy.ca 2026-05-11 14:22
Several years ago I was looking to set up a media server and initially grabbed Plex because I'd heard so much good about it at the time. The moment it asked me to create an account with Plex during setup and I discovered this wasn't optional I immediately uninstalled it. I remain baffled that *anyone* was okay with needing an externally managed account in order to use software running entirely on their own hardware, let alone the litany of additional enshittification that has happened since.
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@KbSez@piefed.social 2026-05-11 12:40
I was a big supporter of PLEX for a lot of years but I don't want all the streaming options and ads and crap it was giving me. All I want is a solid media server application and Plex was no longer it. JellyFin has been fantastic. I'll never go back
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@spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-11 18:47
I've had so many instances of free to use, lifetime licenses, and purchased software that have turned into subscription services that I refuse to install anything that requires an account unless it can't be avoided. The fact that Plex required an account be created to view my own local content years before they started charging for use made it obvious subscription fees were coming. Jellyfin works great. Combined with Wireguard it works great anywhere.
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@cantankerous_cashew@lemmy.world 2026-05-11 23:54
Plex is a [series C for-profit company](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plex) and is 100% beholden to its investors who expect a handsome return on investment; the enshittification & price hikes are literally guaranteed to continue. Existing users can, and should expect to be squeezed for profits until they have nothing left to give
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@KatherinaReichelt@feddit.org 2026-05-11 09:55
My opinion: Plex has made it clear that they want your money. They don't want you to host your own media and be happy with that. They want you to pay a subscription. The whole Plex Pass Lifetime subscription is kind of a trap. You might be getting away with paying once currently, but let's be honest: That means that they have taken your money once. And a some time in the future, a MBA dude will notice that they have a lot of non-paying heavy users (meaning: users who have paid several years ago, which is not relevant for the revenue goals of the current quarter) - and they will try to get you to pay again and again. You might be okay with that, but if you don't want to get hassled, you need to switch to something else.
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@soratoyuki@piefed.social 2026-05-11 13:23
Not that I want to defend Plex which is definitely enshittifying, but I don't think most people are buying Plex to stream their own media. They're doing it so *other* people can stream their media. Not wanting to buy a domain and set up port forwarding or a reverse proxy or whatever doesn't seem unreasonable to me. My grandparents are never going to use Tailscale, and even if they did, I don't think there are any Tailscale smart TV apps. Disclosure: I run Plex and Jellyfin (and Navidrome) in parallel, and bought a lifetime pass years ago.
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@biscuit@lemdro.id 2026-05-12 07:54
In fairness to Plex, I bought a Lifetime subscription during a Black Friday deal over a decade ago and it's still serving me well to this day. I have jellyfin set up ready to go but Plex has the UX down at this point. I'll keep using it whilst my lifetime subscription remains valid.
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@MrSulu@lemmy.ml 2026-05-12 06:24
You were right to switch whether the price increased or not.
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@little_tuptup@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-12 19:44
Projects like Plex, they started out from the open source community, had free contributions, and then monetized. People are bastardizing open source.
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@meathappening@lemmy.ml 2026-05-12 04:22
Imo anyone who stayed with Plex after they required you to create an account is insane, especially considering there have always been good alternatives.
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@Zink@programming.dev 2026-05-11 16:23
I have a pretty old lifetime Plex pass that I got on sale. I'm still 100% a Jellyfin convert. Keeping my Plex server while trying out Jellyfin myself lasted even less time than my Windows partition after I had linux installed.
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@aberama44@lemmy.zip 2026-05-11 08:13
One thing is the price, a whole another thing is the cluttered UI with too many features. I just want play a movie/tv series. Switched to Jellyfin and not looking back. Just hope Jelly doesnt suffer the same fate. 🙂
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@mr_sunburn@lemmy.ml 2026-05-11 12:22
I've been using Jellyfin for about 4 months as a home media server on an old laptop I installed Debian on and... I have nothing to add to the conversation, I just wanted to brag about that because it works really well and I was afraid I would fuck it up. Anyway, Plex no good.
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@B0NK3RS@lazysoci.al 2026-05-11 06:52
If I was starting new today I'd go for Jellyfin but my family is all set up for Plex now and I'm not going through that painful process again :D
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@alekwithak@lemmy.world 2026-05-11 21:45
I run both concurrently, but Plex has had a rash of outages recently that led to it and any services relying on it completely useless. It's insane that an online service outage would cause me to be unable to stream media locally, so yeah Jellyfin has been all but essential, recently.
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@cmeu@lemmy.world 2026-05-12 00:29
Plex still costs the same to me. Lifetime pass means no price hike, and it "just works."
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@MolochHorridus@piefed.social 2026-05-11 06:16
Last time I compared the Plex handled finding and using subtitles so much more user friendly than Jellyfin.
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@SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 2026-05-11 22:43
I literally pay the same for Nebula, which is decidedly not my own media. Paying a subscription for your own media playback is so stupid.
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@ItsNotImportant24@lemmy.ml 2026-05-12 01:27
I've been self hosting for about 2 years now. I never gave Plex a thought. I immediately went with Jellyfin and setup tailscale for remote access and its been awesome. We have our phones and tvs with android boxes all connected. Only we use Wholphin on the android boxes bc its better but extremely happy with the Jellyfin/Tailscale setup.
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@blitzen@lemmy.ca 2026-05-11 07:53
> Plex prices are expensive just to access your own media. I’m as guilty as the next guy, but it’s nearly never our “own” media.
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@Nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-05-11 15:58
jellyfin just runs and looks better, too
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@Retail4068@lemmy.world 2026-05-11 09:43
Oh god,I have to pay $3 to use someone else's code to stream my stolen media 🤣
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@mrodri89@lemmy.zip 2026-05-11 14:42
Jellyfin is nice that even a noob like me can struggle a bit but get it working. :)
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@s38b35M5@lemmy.world 2026-05-11 12:11
Plex stopped being useful to me in 2019. At the time I had only about 300 movies and the same number of TV episodes. The database kept getting corrupt, causing long load times of video info pages, or perpetual spinning progress indicator. After fixing the database (and losing all watch metadata each time) three times in one year, I moved to a plain file share served from the NAS with Kodi running on my Nvidia Shield. In seven years, Kodi's local DB has never corrupted. I now have 900+ movies and 2500 TV episodes. I can handle any file type, any video CODEC, can play thousands of games from the internet game library. The DB can be easily backed up and imported into a new install if needed. And the best part? I didn't pay anyone to access any of the media I own, and no corpo gets access to my library or watch history. Forget Plex.
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@tomkatt@lemmy.world 2026-05-13 01:51
I have a Jellyfin server as backup, but its clients are shit for anything that uses subtitles. I bought plex pass years back for $80 on sale, can't complain, but I'm never going to wholly rely on something closed source that requires online credentials.
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@TyrionBean@lemmy.ml 2026-05-12 17:46
I've never used Plex, but I have my own server at Hetzner with large drives and I love my Jellyfin server. I use it every day for shows, movies, and tons of music at home, in the metro, and walking around town and traveling. I've never had a problem with it. Honestly, it's fantastic.
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@AA5B@lemmy.world 2026-05-12 17:05
I can’t comment on Plex vs JellyFin, but it’s an interesting perspective that $3/mon for remote access is too much I use another piece of opensource software, where I consider that a plus. It takes the headache and security issues off my hands, while I can support the developers with a small contribution for an optional feature
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@JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-11 12:19
I have been using Jellyfin for over a year, brilliant thing. Makes it very easy to stream my media; I have one client catered to music, and the main one for movies/TV shows.
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@obinice@lemmy.world 2026-05-11 10:58
If only my TV had a Jellyfin app, I could switch, but alas it doesn't. Got to use Plex if I want to watch stuff from any home streaming thingy. That said, it's free to do that, at least. I just don't have the money or time to buy an external box and fiddle with it to get it running these days either, otherwise I'd build a modern version of the XBMC server I used to have in days gone by :-(
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@Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 2026-05-11 12:20
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: Fewer Letters | More Letters ---|--- DNS | Domain Name Service/System HA | Home Assistant automation software ~ | High Availability IP | Internet Protocol NAS | Network-Attached Storage NAT | Network Address Translation Plex | Brand of media server package SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VPN | Virtual Private Network ---------------- 8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms. [Thread #283 for this comm, first seen 11th May 2026, 12:20] [[FAQ](http://decronym.xyz/)] [[Full list](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/selfhosted@lemmy_world)] [[Contact](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A)] [[Source code](https://gist.github.com/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)]
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@bagodogs@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-11 17:06
I run Jellyfin for myself and Plex for others. The Jellyfin android tv app almost pushed me back to Plex, but Wholpin works quite well.
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@blinfabian@feddit.nl 2026-05-11 15:39
when making a media server i first went for plex. but when i heard it costs money to view my own files in 4k i had to use jellyfin instead
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@Hippy@piefed.social 2026-05-11 16:58
I run both side by side and I'm very thankful that Plex exists. Jellyfin is my backup app and would be very painful to get setup in my families houses.
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@webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 2026-05-11 09:35
I saw the writing on the wall when they kept pushing me for needing an account on their servers. Glad i left.
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@remon@ani.social 2026-05-11 07:17
Seems 80% of readers don't care ....
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@Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe 2026-05-12 18:11
If I could get Jellyfin to work remotely I would never use Plex again quite happily. I pay £4 a month and my in laws have to pay £2 a month for remote access, it's starting to add up for content I download and host on my storage.
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@Phantaloons@piefed.zip 2026-05-12 03:27
"But my parents can't use a VPN!!" Was that line in the sand drawn before or after footing the bill, installing a media server, and an entire arr stack? Their house is right there, bro.
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@RxBrad@infosec.pub 2026-05-11 16:27
It's been a year or two since I gave up on Jellyfin, so maybe it's better now... But the Android TV client was rough, rough, *rough* when I tried using it. If you watched Live TV, the transcode buffer would just keep going and fill your entire disk over the course of a few days after you shut down the client and stopped watching. It was a coin toss whether you'd actually be able to stream any given movie. If you had media with more than 6 audio channels, and also needed to transcode (because you live in the U.S. and don't have unlimited upload bandwidth).... playback would just *die* right around the 5-10Mbps range. I spent a weekend on the forums chasing down the exact scenarios that caused this one, someone had a Pull Request that fixed it in a matter of hours (by mimicking the transcode logicr of the official desktop client)... and [the dev told them to kick rocks](https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/pull/4037#issuecomment-2980379921)