4d ago

Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April

www.plex.tv Important 2025 Plex Updates

Personal Media and Beyond You’re going to be hearing a lot from us this year—we’ve got a ton of exciting...

We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.

713 comments

I keep a Jellyfin instance running as a hedge. Here's the thing with Plex (and actually a lot of companies set up similarly): those "lifetime" memberships are a trap. Think about it: Plex gets your money ONCE but they have ongoing expenses. Sooner or later, they'll have spent every single cent made by a lifetime membership unless they either get more folks OR squeeze everyone a bit more.
Once they started adding their own shows and making strange UI decisions, I could sense the end was coming. A move like this brings it up fast. Jellyfin is not nearly as good as Plex in a lot of ways, but it's really Open Source.
Anyway, a lot of rambling, but in short: when there is a "lifetime" subscription, watch out!

ITT: valid critiques of plex, understatements about how easy it is to set up and run Jellyfin for you and your friends/family, and a surprising number of people who don’t understand how plex works.

I'm surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you're already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there's good projects out there. If you're like me and you don't understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you're in business.

I used to use Plex, then one day my internet was down and since Plex couldn't phone home, it wouldn't let me log in to watch media ON MY LAN.
So yeah it's inherently broken. That's before you even consider the licensing.

A big part of the appeal with Plex is that you can run a server and friends can sign up for a FREE account and stream remotely. When you take this away, you're going to just kneecap the whole offering. This is such an arrogant move from Plex: they are thinking that when this change goes live they will get a flood of subscriptions. The more likely outcome is they will get a few subscriptions and a lot more angry and frustrated people that walk away.

I've said it for years that Plex is shit because of their license and the fact that you have no control everyone said no it's fine it's my media fucking look at it now

Hellooooo jellyfin!
Only use open source software

https://jellyfin.org/
- Alright, so I have had Jellyfin installed for years now, but my primary issue is that most devices myself or my users use lack official, readily-available clients. For example, the Samsung TV app is a developer mode install. Last I looked, nobody has put a build into the store.
  I really want to use Jellyfin, but I feel like my users simply can't. I'm interested in others' experiences here that could help.
  
  I mean, except for Tizen OS isn't most available? You can find the client for Android, Android TV, Windows, Linux (Flatpak), macos, apple ios, and more.
  https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/
  
  Don’t ever connect a “smart” tv to the internet. It’s only going to become shit and steal your data.
  Raspberry Pi, old pc or any kind of other external player will always be better for connectivity and control.
  
  A Chromecast TV device might fill your gap. There is a jellyfin android TV build in the app store and it works with every TV. Just costs about 50 dollarydoos
  
  I had the same experience with my parents. They have a Samsung TV and the Jellyfin experience was awful.
  I ended up getting them a little N100 mini pc and installed Bazzite and the Jellyfin app from Flathub. You can configure it so it knows it’s on a TV, and responds to keyboard controls. I got them a remote from a company called Pepper Jobs that gives keyboard input and now they have a great experience with it. Even my mom, who’s a big technophobe, loves it.
  My dad also has an LG TV in his workshop that doesn’t have a working Jellyfin app (cause it’s ten years old), and he uses the Jellyfin app for his Xbox on that one.
  
  I run an Android TV box on my Smart TV, because I don't trust them on the internet.
  
  I can speak from my experience with an Apple TV, the application "Infuse" works amazing with a jellyfin server. Though the application is essentially $1 month subscription, but works across all your apple devices, if you have any. I think it's worth it.
  Additionally, the official app for Android TV worked pretty well when I last tried it on an Nvidia Shield
  
  I love Jellyfin, but I always find something that I have a problem with when trying it, for example it has weak searching, tagging, and TV show identification compared to Plex.
  I tried using it even as recent as yesterday for some searching and tagging, but it's searching, tagging, and even TV show identification has problems and is weak in comparison to Plex. I couldn't mass-tag certain videos which was annoying for me, I had to do it one-by-one and it ended up taking a long time, that was frustrating. Also, tags don't show up in searches anymore because it hurts performance apparently. With that said, maybe Plex has the same limitation, but it doesn't mean that Jellyfin has to. They are open-source, and they can be better than Plex, and in many ways they already are, but I keep running into pain points with how I want to use it, and it does feel a bit unfortunate. With that said, I'm a developer too, so I know it's not always that simple. It's just in some ways it feels less "complete" than Plex.
  I'm still really pleased with Jellyfin though, and especially the future potential of it.
  
  You can access Jellyfin through a browser, too. Is that an option for the Samsung TV?
  
  I use Jellyfin client on my new Samsung TV via a Google TV dongle (ONN tv, $25 at Walmart). Seems to work well.
  My only complaint is the stream volume has been very low after a recent update. Downsampling helps but seems like it shouldn' t be necessary.
  
  The only major pain point I had with Jellyfin was getting it on my Samsung TV yes. It is absolutely not a good recommendation for people with Samsungs unless they're willing to get their hands very dirty. Now, once I got the app side loaded on there, it works perfectly well, but the process sucked ass.
  
  I've never had an issue with the apps. It's on my Chromecast and my android phone, and I typically stream to the TV from my phone.
  My only issue is that they require a real cert (which is good tbh) and I am having trouble getting letsencrypt working due to my isp blocking port 80 and me dragging my feet getting DNS working
  
  https://emby.media/
  
  Yeah.
  Jellyfin is spectacular for LAN usage on two computers. Once you start using devices (because, you know, that is what people tend to plug into their TVs...) or going on travel, it rapidly becomes apparent that it just isn't a competitor.
  Hell, a quick google suggests jellyfin STILL doesn't have caching of media for offline viewing. Plex's works maybe 40% of the time but... 40% is still higher than 0%.
  I have a lifetime pass for Plex and encourage anyone who even kind of cares to get one next time it is on sale (or shortly before the scheduled price hike). I have tried Jellyfin a few times over the years and... it is basically exactly what I hate with FOSS "alternatives". It isn't an alternative in the slightest but people insist on talking it up because they want it to be and that just makes people less willing to try genuinely good alternatives.
  To put it bluntly, Plex is an "offline netflix" as it were. Jellyfin is a much better version of smbstation and all the other stuff we used to stream porn to our playstations back in the day.
- Alas my TV (LG WebOS 2) doesn't have an application for Jellyfin, or I'd have switched years ago :-(
  
  Is there an emby app available or Kodi? The base of Jellyfin should work in either. Plug and play as far as I'm aware with maybe some issues for certain versions.
- any recommendations to get it to work remotely? the good thing about plex was it was easy to set up, but the quality was medicore.
  
  I just figured it out. You have to open the port on your router
- Before now I was on the sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to teach my extended family how to use Jellyfin instead of plex but after this I'm already mid-way through setting up a Jellyfin docker container on my server and I only found out an hour ago
- I've been testing out jellyfin for the last couple months but it doesn't really fill the void of this specific feature that's being locked behind a pay wall. If anyone has good recommendations for securely and reliably hosting jellyfin behind SSL and auth with email password resets where I don't have to worry about it as much as Plex.
  I use jellyfin locally but for a handful of remote clients I have I may well block off their access they're not going to be able to figure out my hand spun services and wall of text.
  
  I would go for a reverse proxy to get ssl running.
  https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/networking/#running-jellyfin-behind-a-reverse-proxy
  Handling users with forgotten passwords is, sadly, a manual chore for the administrator.
  https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/users/adding-managing-users#profile
  
  Authentik + jellyfin SSO plugin?
  I haven't tried it out personally, but I use authentik, for that you can just create a password policy, then add a new stage for identification (just make sure to add the email field), and an email stage, then create a flow.
  More work on your end than paying someone else obviously.
  
  Forget the Auth, use VPN profiles as access controls. Give them to trusted folks and you're gold.
- Jellyfin is still way behind Plex in general performance but I keep a VM of it running and updated, for when the day comes that Plex is absolutely worthless.
  Which at this rate, is, well, we're getting there.
- Jellyfin depends on proprietary Microsoft .NET, even on Linux.
  It's still better than Plex and Emby, which are fully proprietary, and have no source code. But I will stick with sshfs with kodi, and nginx plus mpv for now.
  
  Except, it isn't, .NET Core is an open source framework by the .NET Foundation

jellyfin + tailscale is all you need. It's so damn good and easy

Another company fucked by executives.

Wireguard so you are always seen as being on the local network. This bit of assholery is easily defeated.

Can’t say I have a huge issue with this - Plex isn’t FOSS and the infrastructure to make this happen isn’t free. Other options are available if you don’t want to pay the fee.

I already pay for plex pass but I'm going to start looking into jelly fin out of principle. I will not support the enshitification of a service I use and this is how it starts. Soon they will have tiered subscriptions and then the cheap one will be taken away and the cheapest paid one will be stuffed with ads then all tiers will be stuffed with ads then they will jack up prices again or charge more for sharing with family or block it all together to force your family to get their own sub and the circle of enshitification will be complete.

I'm not pirating a bunch of shows just to pay Plex for the privilege of watching it.
- Also remember to give them your credit card, name and address for the privilege of pirating the content.
  
  Even better, it's now a nice database of who companies and governments can go after when they want or need to!
- lmao me either
- Jellyfin ftw

Judging by the rest of the thread I'm going to get downvoted for this, but what the hell:
I'm sure I'll switch to Jellyfin eventually but I tried it out a few weeks ago to see what all the hype was about and it just... wasn't great. It was difficult to setup, with way too many overly-complicated settings, and then it refused to play one of the two test files I tried. Like it or not there's a reason that Plex is the dominant player in the game, and a large part of that reason is that it verges on plug-and-play for simplicity of both setup and use.
Yes, it sucks that they're removing remote streaming for free users, but I imagine there's a significant chunk of users who don't know or care how to properly open their server up to the world and are relying on the Plex proxies for their streams (which happens entirely in the background), and those aren't going to be cheap to run. Maybe putting them behind a paywall will provide the resources to make them faster.
I did buy a lifetime pass last time they announced a price hike; it's honestly paid for itself many times over, and I've been encouraging other users I know to do the same before this next one, because yes, it is a significant hike this time around. That said, while I wouldn't pay monthly for it, I do still feel like the lifetime pass is tremendous value for such a polished product. It's a shame they've had to do it at all, but I don't begrudge them for it.

As a result I imagine more users will look at other offerings such as Jellyfin.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
https://jellyfin.org/
- This might be what it takes to at least get me to install it.
  Do they live well together with the same shared media library?
  Also, are there audiobook clients for Jellyfin?
  
  I found audiobooks to be kind of awkward on jellyfin. I'm now running Audiobookshelf for all my audiobooks, radio shows and podcasts. Together with the Lissen app on Android, it works very nicely!
  
  I've heard rumors that they do play well together, but that's people running it in docker with a "read-only" flag set for the content folder, with metadata saved in the config folder
  I've used the Jellyfin app to listen to audio books, but for my purposes, it's easier to run the separate client/server Audiobookshelf.
  
  My Jellyfin and Plex containers were able to use the same locations for media.
  
  I've had Jellyfin and Plex running using the same media directory for a couple years now. I think I had to make a couple small changes for things like seasons of a TV show to show up correctly, but nothing incredibly difficult. Definitely worth setting up and playing with periodically so when you do finally get sick of Plex, you're ready to just switch.
  Only thing I use Plex for exclusively now is when I'm flying, Plex has the Netflix style download option and Jellyfin just downloads the video file. I like Plex's way better just from personal preference.
  
  I haven't used Plex myself but Jellyfin doesn't create any kind of meta files in the library folders. If that is true for Plex as well then I don't see why it would be a problem to point them at the same shared library.
  
  Of you use docker plex and jellyfin arent gonna be messing with your media unless you delete/modify them within the respective clients (but then again thats what *arr is for)
  
  I didn't enjoy using Jellyfin for audiobooks, on my android I use the Jellyfin client to download the book I wanna listen to and then I use AudioAnchor for listening to it.
- https://emby.media/
  
  They too put a whole lot behind their subscription though
  https://emby.media/support/articles/Premiere-Feature-Matrix.html
  
  FUCK Emby! What they did was worse than what Plex is doing even now

This is the best ad campaign Jellyfin could have asked for.

They seem to be getting a lot of hate for this, but Plex is not FOSS... They have the roots but they currently have like 100 paid employees and are trying to make a business out of it. They have to do something to make money to pay people every month. My $75 10 years ago isn't going to do much for that... The fact that they've made it this far without folding is impressive.

How to kill a service speedrun any%

If you don't like the price there's always jellyfin.
Got to say that I have been very happy with it.
- Jellyfin is just so much better, imo. Much cleaner, less stuff that I don’t actually need.
  I'm a plex pass lifetime owner, but I don’t regret switching to Jellyfin one bit.
- Yeah I switched 2-3 years ago because so many features were paywalled and on jellyfin I can at least use plugins
  
  I switched when I had an internet outage and couldn’t log into Plex locally to watch my own media. Very happy with Jellyfin since then.
- Does Jellyfin do remote streaming?
  
  Yes. You'll have to set up a reverse proxy, I use nginx, and get yourself domain, I use duck DNS, and get a SSL certificate from let's encrypt if your wanting to steam to something like a Chromecast or Roku.
  It's not all that hard honestly and there's a good guide here for general home media, including both Plex and jellyfin
  https://www.simplehomelab.com/docker-media-server-2024/
  
  If you can set it up? Yup.
  Behind CGNAT? Maybe you need to set up a relay or something to circumvent it.
  
  With the caviat that you have tailscale enabled on both devices. This prevents it from being used on a roku outside your home but you could access it remotely from your computer/phone/tablet.
  It is significantly harder than Plex, currently. There are improvements happening all the time though.

I have a lifetime plex pass so this does not really affect me but I expect the trend of degrading experience to continue. I would have switched to Jellyfin a long time ago but I am dreading contacting everyone I share with and getting them migrated.
- Same boat here. I chose Plex because the apps were everywhere. Smart TV's, phones, web...
  I can switch, no problem. I don't want to have to teach my parents a new app. OMFG!
  
  This is also true of Jellyfin, though. I have apps on my Windows PC, my Android phone, multiple Nvidia Shield boxes on my TVs, plus the web interface if I need it.
  I switched over from Plex several years ago, and while it takes a bit more time to configure, compatibility for clients seems just as good for Jellyfin as it is for Plex.
  Most importantly, Jellyfin is strictly client/server, no "cloud" bullshit and no remote account is required; I don't want Plex phoning home with a list of the media on my file server.
  
  its actually the sole reason why i ended up paying for plex myself. its not because on ME that i ended up using plex, its moreso everyone else that I want to give my server access to with the least amount of hurdles that made me ultimately go that route.
- Same here except we’ve also started living somewhere with managed internet and we don’t have the ability for port forwarding or upnp anymore. Plex relay is the only reason I can still stream to my phone or my family and jellyfin has no equivalent.
  This is incredibly common in smaller countries that are double natting inside their ISPs. This used to be very common in the US before the FCC blocked apartments from contracting with ISPs. Unfortunately for many of us this is coming back rapidly since the current FCC has reversed that rule and landlords can force you on a specific ISP and equipment again.
  I can go way out of my way to make this work anyway with a lot of router on a stick style garbage out to a cloud host somewhere and retrain my entire family to connect a jellyfin app to my server or I can keep using plex and not work that hard
  
  You can use Cloudflare Tunnel as well.

As a plex pass lifetime user, this doesn't change anything for me.
I am, however, blown away that the price went from $75 CDN to $350 CDN over the last 10 years!! That's just insane!
- I'm not sure where you're getting that from, the article literally states the price hasn't changed in 10 years, and still hasn't, but it finally will on the 29th of April.
  This tracks with my experience as it's probably been 10 years since I bought the lifetime pass and here in the UK it's often on sale for basically the same price (about £75 if I recall).
  
  Well, it was $75 CDN when i bought in 2012, it's $150-170 CDN now, and going up to $249 USD which converts to $358 CDN, so I'm assumong they'll round down to $350 or up to $360 CDN.
  The conversion from USD to CDN kills it for us sadly. It's just such a huge jump this time. More than double on this bump.
- They have sales, and it's not really worth paying the "MSRP" price. My wife got Plex Pass for $80 back in 2023, and I got it late last year for $90.

I stopped using Plex shortly after they started forcing logging in with your online Plex account to connect to LAN only based server. The writing was on the wall all those years ago. Who wants to be locked out of their media when the internet is offline, completely defeated the point of self hosting local infrastructure
Jellyfin, while lacking a bit when I first migrated, has continued improved over the years and it has been joyful to use. Plus Jellyfin supported hardware transcoding before Plex did, which was a gripe I had with Plex at the time.
I stream from my server remotely and share with Family without hassle. I dunno where Plex is trying to go, glad I bailed long ago

I gotta be honest, when I look at the problem pragmatically, it'll be a lot easier to pay $20 a year than to switch to jellyfin and get all my users to figure out how to install clients and make it work for them.
I'm already at the point in my life where my primary concern is making things work smoothly, and if I need to throw money at something to make it work smoothly, the choice is a no brainer. (At least for some values of "money")

Well this is a good reason to finish my migration to Jellyfin I think.
I only use remote streaming a couple times per year, so paying for plex pass just for that seems a bit silly. Their online-only account auth is also super annoying if the internet is down.

Why do people use this when Jellyfin exists?
- Because of the Wife Factor. Getting people to convert requires getting past a lot of social inertia. It requires you to first convince them that the convenience of streaming services isn’t actually worth paying for. Then it requires an elegant onboarding experience. Lastly, Plex simply makes remote access easy. Sure, you could fiddle with reverse proxies for Jellyfin. But that’s easy to mess up. Instead, it’s much smoother to simply sign into Plex.
  I can talk my tech-illiterate “My google chrome desktop icon got moved, and now I don’t know how to check my email” mother-in-law through Plex’s sign-up process over the phone. In fact, I did. It’s familiar enough that anyone who has signed up for a streaming service can figure it out. I can’t do that with Jellyfin, because their eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking about custom server URLs or IP addresses. Hell, my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have a native Jellyfin app available on the App Store. If I wanted to install it for her, I would need to sideload it.
  Jellyfin does a lot of things right. But by design, the setup process will never be as elegant as Plex’s, because that elegant system requires a centralized server to actually handle it. And centralized servers are exactly what Jellyfin was built to rebel against.
  To be clear, I run both concurrently; Jellyfin for myself, and Plex for friends/family. I got the lifetime Plex Pass license a decade ago, and it has more than paid for itself since then. But it sounds like a bunch of my friends and family may end up switching to Jellyfin if they don’t want to deal with the PlexPass subscription.
  
  Setting jellyfin up is for the technically inclined, i'll agree there, but once deployed I don't really see where Plex fundamentally excels over Jellyfin when it comes to "the wife factor"?
  You open the app, app shows library, you click on desired media item, desired media item plays. What am i missing?
  
  I think its a great idea to run the two concurrently. I didn’t see the point but given how plex is evolving i think its time to start getting familiar with jellyfin.
  
  100% agree with the reverse proxy set up, it's not hard but it is intimidating at first and just fyi, reverse proxy set up is a ton easier if you're using swag with the drag, drop, run for a ton of apps including SSL certificate renewal.
  https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/2020-08-21-introducing-swag
  With that reverse proxy and SSL set up, no problems with the wife test or parent test and jellyfin for me at least.
- I took a dive into linux and jellyfin and im too stupid for it.

The audacity of this company to increase prices when:
A) downloads are locked behind the paywall but havent worked in years (probably close to a decade at this point)
B) they focus all the development time on bringing bullshit to the platform (live tv, rentals, other streaming app searches, etc)
Requiring a subscription for remote access is actually fucking insane, they don't have any bandwidth costs associated with that other than authentication so ???
This will drive people to Jellyfin, and watch how fast Plex drops into irrelevance when all the selfhosters move away. Plex is (now was) the #1 thing to that both myself and others in this community would recommend to someone looking to get into selfhosting. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ not anymore, wonder how much the revenue will drop?
- Final thought: there's also a fair chance (I'd rate it at almost 70%) that they presented this to us because they knew it would piss people off. Then, in a week or so, they will post a "we're sorry, is this better?" with the changes they're ACTUALLY going to make. A ploy to make us blindly agree to whatever they want because "at least it's better than what they wanted originally" 🙄🙄
- Requiring a subscription for remote access is actually fucking insane, they don't have any bandwidth costs associated with that other than authentication so ???
  They have provided a free relay service for years that makes it possible to access a server even if there are things in the way like CGNAT. That service had a low bandwidth limit but undoubtedly cost them money, so yes. But yes, they should have just moved that feature entirely to Plex pass (there is already a higher bandwidth limit for Plex pass users)
  
  Ehhh i don't think that justifies having people pay to stream, i doubt a lot of people even ever used that functionality and yeah they could have just pay walled it if it was that much of a problem.
- I could only get my downloads to work adding some conf line to my unbound DNS settings I saw on reddit.
  Jellyfin is on my list.

Glad I bought the Plex Pass like 13 years ago. While I understand everyone seems to think everything should be free, I'm sure your boss wishes you worked for free too, but the world doesn't work that way.
I'm OK supporting products I use , and Plex is an example of this for me. It was a well spend $75 in 2013
- Nah. Cool that you think that, though. The moment they started charging for what was a free service, they lost me. I have gigabit internet. The only reason i used their service to begin with was ease of use.
  Hot take but maybe everything doesn't need to be an infinitely expanding business. Just imagine for a second that it's fine for something to just break even, pay for the few mainteners salaries and not expand the business at all ever. I know that I just uttered the cardinal evil under capitalism but fucking seriously. The primary userbase of plex is pirates. The whole incentive is not having to pay for a streaming service. Charging money for it is just torpedoing your entire userbase. The entire appeal of Plex was it not charging money.
  
  Yah and I still bought a plexpass and then left Plex. Do I care no I got my money worth. Software costs money how would they continue to developed it if not getting paid?
  
  I don’t know when or how, but it seems in my lifetime we went from that. Having corporations that just did something well and left it at that to this idiotic grow or die mentality that seems to be fueled by investor ROI.
  
  So, you've got option. You can just roll your own, or go to jellyfin.
  I'm one of the first people to complain about the incessant need to grow 20% a year to appease shareholders and how unsustainable that is. But I also realize as I said, stuff cost money and "just breaking even" will also grow in cost every year with everything else, so... Even in that perfect world you were describing, there would be an increase in cost applied to that project.
  Much like I am sure you expect at the very least a cost of living raise each year. I'm also guessing you're glad your paycheck to bills ratio isn't what it was 20y ago. (or I can say, that for me that is true). I'm pretty happy my discretionary money is more now than it was then. I bet those developers also want that same thing.
- Jellyfin
- I fucking hope to god they don't go full enshittification and decide to revoke the lifetime licenses.
  
  Nah they'll just release Plex2
  
  Even with Plex pass they were really pushing their paid content. Much happier with Jellyfin, and it was very easy to switch.
  
  I keep expecting something, the lifetime pass has more/less paid for itself.
  That being said, they do still offer the lifetime pass, so clearly they see it as worth it.
- Your view unfortunately doesn't show you how shitty the unpaid experience has become. XBMC used to be a good product. Since becoming Plex, now we have:
  no local hardware accel
  no HDR
  panels that look like local videos that trick you into switching to a paid app
  rearranged home screen after some updates
  no downloads on remote devices
  and now I'll lose the ability to share streaming with my kid, who lives many cities away
  If this were clear from the outset , no one would be upset. But pulling back features Plex at one time promised "forever" (remote streaming), is complete rug-pull bullshit.
  You can enjoy that warm and fuzzy reverse-fomo feeling now, but you should know that they'll start limiting your paid experience eventually.
  
  Xbmc didn't become plex. It's still alive and kicking but rebranded to Kodi (mostly because it had little to do with xbox anymore) ages ago.
  
  no local hardware accel
  What do you mean by this?
  
  what? all of these work on plex for me:
  -server hardware accel transcoding (are you talking about something else?)
  -HDR playback works fine for me...
  -I can download just fine from a browser or the plex app, when remote
- Hot take here but not wrong
  
  No, it's still wrong.
  We have ways to do NAT traversal and hole punching on consumer routers. Failing that, UPnP and port forwarding exist. Or, god forbid, IPv6.
  In the rare case that literally none of those are an option, they would have to use TURN to relay between an intermediary. That is a reasonable case to ask the user to pay for their bandwidth usage, but they don't have to be greedy fuckers by making everyone pay for it.
  This is enshittification and corporate greed. Nothing more, nothing less.
- Same here. I don't like some of the recent decisions, but I remember the time I looked at the value and thought "yeah, this is working, valuable, and I can get behind it", and bought the lifetime pass.
  And I used the hell out of it! I don't regret supporting the developers at all.
  But features like plugins disappear, rolled to in-house teams. They work better, but cost more to maintain.
  It's ambitious, and gives developers plenty of work, but I feel the new redesign bit more than they can chew and overran budgets. They may be trying to balance budgets.
- I mean, I'm with you, it is nice to support something you use, financially. But you made a one time payment 12 years ago. Your money is certainly not there anymore, they used it and paid something with it. I don't know, it just sounds like a really weird take reading your post. But maybe its me whose weird, I would prefer one time payment over subscriptions too.
  
  Lots of businesses have and do exist without a subscription model. I'm fond of the Paprika Recipe Manager, for example, which asks a one-time payment for each major version. All commercial software worked this way in the 80s.
  
  I looked at and look at it as an investment. 13 years ago it could have been a good decision or a bad one.
  The idea behind a lifetime membership is a means to spark fund raising, and I thought then "I use this a lot, it works for me I'm gonna pay for it".
  
  You're right the guy who paid $5 once for a month of Plex Pass is way more valuable than the one who paid $75 (or $120 full price). The only people more valuable to the company than the $5 guy are the ones who use the app for free.
- Yeah, this doesn't seem like that big of a deal for most people here. They kept the price down as long as possible. I spent $119 just before the 'rona hit and I think it's been well worth it.
- What did you pay for exactly?
  
  What are you asking? I bought a lifetime subscription to Plex pass.
- OK, but why is it a for profit company in the first place?
  And why does open source Software like xz, ffmpeg, etc still work without being for profit?
  Fucking liberal.
  
  They don't. Most people get paid by companies to work on that stuff. For example red hat pays for a lot of OS development.
  
  You know nothing very proudly

I just want to make sure I read this correctly. It says that if you're a Plex plass holder already that remote streaming changes won't affect your service. This means that if I have the lifetime subscription and host my own server than users whom have not payed for Plex pass can continue to access this server without issue correct?

I’ve been using Plex many years. I abandoned it about 1-2 years ago when they began their enshittification journey. Now I see they are continuing to double down on being assholes.
They do not need any more resources to allow people to use what already exists. Most people run their own servers, and, they track all that by the way. Hence why people moved away from it.
Don’t give them your money. Let them rot. They fucked their user base who built them.
- This always baffled me when I had a friend who showed me his Plex server years ago.
  So you're using a service which makes it easy for you to host and access everything wherever you are, pulls in all the metadata for shows and movies and you're not worried about them tracking all of that?
  When I finally set my own up I used Jellyfin from the start, I prefer as little tracking as possible but thats just me
  
  What do you do to access jellyfin wherever?

Well, looks like my decision to stick with Kodi and never bother with Plex is about to pay dividends.
- Kodi and Plex do different things, both of them organize your media and give you a pretty interface to access it, but Kodi is a program running locally and Plex is a webservice that you can access remotely. Jellyfin is the open source program that does the same thing as Plex, i.e. a media server manager that can be accessed remotely through a web interface.
- I used Kodi for years (back before and during the XMBC - > Kodi shift) before moving to Plex, it was great (a pain for a good config, but once your clients have remote access and use a shared database its insane how good it can be) but Plex was touted for so long I figured I'd give it a try when I saw a good sale. I've been using it for the past 8 years or so but may go back to Kodi or Jellyfin.
- The equivalent to Plex is Jellyfin I think, Plex can be used as a media server for Kodi.
- NAS + Tailscale + Kodi is the easiest to setup for me. Works really good.

Universal media server works for me. I run it headless on a small instance. Streams my movies and music just fine.

I've been meaning to set up a homeserver with plex recently but will defnitely go for jellyfin now that I read this thread.

I never got the appeal of plex. I've been using Serviio back in the day and it was free, open source and did what I needed it to, which is play a video on tv, that's it.
Plex wanted me to purchase subscription years ago and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out how to set it up for free.
I've been using stremio for a few years now but i think it's closing in on the EOL as well, so i might go back to serviio and kodi one of these days. Just need a good NAS that could run a streaming server as well. Don't want to keep my gaming rig on at all times just to watch movies.

I moved on to jellyfin after I found out the hard way Plex servers need to authenticate for use. I'm sure by now there are ways to set up offline authentication but I already didn't like the idea of paying monthly to stream my own content from my own machine. It just didn't make sence to me. Jellyfin isn't perfect, or as flashy as Plex, but it works, looks fine, and its free, not counting a much deserved donation to the devs .
- Plex Media Server- Settings : Network : List of IP Addresses and Networks that are allowed with Auth : 192.168.4.0/24, e.g.

Why would you expect this to NOT be paid? It requires them to be running servers to stream the media through, I wouldn't expect this to be a free feature.
I dislike Plex for several reasons, but asking for payment for stuff that costs them money is completely justified.

As someone looking to get into self hosting and was researching plex. What’s been the experience like using jellyfish with non techy people? This is mainly something I want to set up for my parents

Dammit, my friend just said he would give me access to his file server, all I have to do is install Plex. Presumably this announcement means that will become impossible without a subscription.

Yeah, my lifetime Jellyfin subscription wasn’t quite that much, thankfully. 😆

So glad i switched to jellyfin half a year ago
- Same. My wife also just asked me to get a bunch of audio books too...so looks like I have to set up that now
  
  The default Jellyfin client isn't great for audiobooks.
  For Apple iOS you might wanna look at https://github.com/LeoKlaus/plappa
  For Android I would look at https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf
  Personally I just download the audiobooks from Jellyfin and play it in https://f-droid.org/packages/com.prangesoftwaresolutions.audioanchor/
  
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/i-threw-away-audibles-app-and-now-i-self-host-my-audiobooks/
  Check out this arstechnica article on AudioBookshelf. Should cover most of what you need to get started.
  
  I would recommend audiobookshelf for the audiobooks, especially if you have your stuff running in docker. It seemed to me like the solutions to force Plex or jellyfin to do books were a bit more hacky than I wanted.

It looks like as long as the host has a Plex pass, this doesn't change much. It is a regression of service, which sucks, but there are viable alternatives for those unable or unwilling to pay. And honestly, jellyfin is the clear winner in that case and always has been.
Now, if they start to charge my friends and family for access to my media after I have already paid them for their lifetime subscription, then I'll grab a pitchfork with the crowd.
Also, why not run both and be ready? The resources required are minimal if you're running via docker, just some extra RAM and a negligible amount of compute for overhead on library maintenance tasks.
- Same. I'm not switching to Jellyfin yet either - mostly because of my boomer parents - but this is getting close to the tipping point for me
- I run both on my unraid NAS. I use plex for streaming to my phone over cell data. I use jellyfin for streaming to my laptops and TV.
  Plex tends to break every once and a while though. Not often, but it happens enough that I'm replacing it with just having my music on a DAP that is synced with Syncthing.
  I also use the comic viewer function of jellyfin.

So basically.. this is a blatant cash grab, and a nearly 200% one depending on the level of service you pay/paid for. Wonder how long it will be before the lifetime pass is discontinued and everyone gets forcibly moved over to a monthly subscription model
- Every service is doing this as expenses and interest rates go up. Its the driving force of enshittification. All the VCs want internet startups to finally turn a profit.

sometimes good software is worth paying for
- Big facts. Even the FOSS software, I buy the premium or donate a bit to it. It only feels right. I couldn't imagine making something millions of people count on and not throw them SOMETHING. Especially when its such a good experience.
- Yes. I have a lifetime Plex pass, and I donated to Jellyfin as well. Looking forward to the day I can uninstall Plex and no longer worry about them potentially giving my data to Media companies so they can sue for piracy
- Yup, that's why people who can afford it should do ate to the jellyfin project

I absolutely love that Emby is such a third thought that they don’t even get a mention anymore. They fucked their loyal users over so much that they don’t even get mentioned anymore. Can’t wait for plex to suffer the same fate

Why would anyone even used Plex since we have jellyfin?
- For working subtitles
  
  Jellyfin subtitles now work flawlessly and you can finally select colors compatible with HDR.
  Migrated to Jellyfin a few months ago and I haven't looked back.
- It was there first and you can share it with friends more easily. For Plex you just register with the central server and share your username with your friends or w/e. Jellyfin has nothing like that.
  
  And now, that feature costs $240. Suddenly, jumping through hoops to configure Jellyfin's external SSO plugin becomes a lot more rewarding.
- Plexamp is (or at least was) pretty awesome. It requires plex and plex pass for its full features. Jellyfin doesn't have anything remotely comparable (though you could always just run Lyrion).
  
  Have you tried Symfonium? I liked Plexamp too, but I think Symfonium is even better, and it's compatible with just about any music server.
  
  Was does it do better than say 'Symfonium'?
- the PS4/PS5 app was one of my deciding factors when I used it

I can understand new features being behind a fee, but this is putting old, old capabilities behind a paywall. Hmmm...
This with a recent decision to remove watch together sort of eliminates the whole reason I would have tried Plex so many years ago.
I'm a fan of Plex (it's worked for me) and understand the Jellyfin crowd too. I'm worried about who is calling the shots at the moment. They aren't aligning with their users.
- Old capabilities that don't even work as well as free alternatives because AMD transcoding support has been """experimental""" for years.
- I can understand new features being behind a fee, but this is putting old, old capabilities behind a paywall. Hmmm...
  I am a Trakt user, was an Evernote user and I am (thankfully) a Plex Pass user...
  What service are we missing that has done the same? We should make a list if there is not one already.

The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience
How stupid do they think we are?
- Very, apparently.
  They use UPnP and NAT-PMP1 to have clients directly stream the media from users' own self-hosted servers. It costs them almost nothing in bandwidth to do that.
  
  To be fair, they didn't say that they needed more resources for remote streaming
- Here, I fixed it:
  The reality is that we need more ~~resources~~money to ~~continue putting forth the best personal media experience~~increase our profit margins.
- Wait, why do you say this? I’m no Plex shill, this is disappointing news to hear and is the strongest push toward Jellyfin I’ve had yet. But they’re certainly a business with employees they need to pay, and their app has an objectively large feature set that needs to be maintained. Their employees deserve raises and benefits, and if costs are rising at the grocery store, they’re probably rising for businesses too. Why are we stupid to believe their financial burden is growing?

I don't really have a problem with this. I paid for a lifetime quite a long time ago. Right now I only use Plex for plexamp and everything else is on jellyfin.
Is finamp at a point that it can replace plexamp yet?

All these comments mentioning jellyfish and I haven’t see a single mention of emby. Is it considered bad or something? Because I switched over to it and I am liking it a lot better than plex so far
- I believe emby went proprietary, and jellyfin is the fork that stayed open source. Naturally Lemmy prefers the FOSS one 😅
  
  Yup, that's why I was on NextCloud, why I avoid MongoDB like the plague, and why I'm here on Lemmy (I justified Reddit because of their open API).
  So yeah, that tracks.
  
  Ironically Plex users cling to their solution like it's life or death without considering the other side.
  Just like when someone mentions that Windows has it's place too and sometimes Linux isnt the be all and end all of all OS.
  The hyprocrisy of some users here...
- Jellyfin is a fork of Emby, so they share much of their codebase.
- Emby subscription costs a lot even if you just want to use it on a home server. It can work without subscription but will display a warning before playback. Jellyfin is free.
  
  Yeah the warning is definitely annoying and especially the ten second counter on it pisses me off. But honestly I would much rather see an unskippable ad for the premium version of the program I am currently using and enjoying than an unskippable ad for literally anything else
- I greatly prefer Emby to Jellyfin.
- I use Emby with the lifetime premier (their 'premium' version).
  Works great, but honestly I would just point people to Jellyfin unless Emby provides something specific you need. I just use it because it's what I've had for years.
- If you're leaving Plex because it's subscribeware, Emby is also subscribeware.
- Its quite annoying how licensing is tied to devices. I can't even sign in after reinstalling my OS.
  
  Interesting. Thanks for the warning I’ll make note of this one
- I like Emby a lot. It's my backup for Plex. I even give them money as development isn't free (frequently)

Time to move to Jellyfin for the rest of their users?

So I have a lifetime Plex pass, but my friend (who is remote) does not. Does this change mean they have the have a Plex pass to connect to my device remotely?
Edit: thanks for the info! After I posted I continued reading and realized that question was already answered! Appreciate the help!
- Option 1: Remote playback with a Plex Pass
  Upgrading to any Plex Pass subscription is a great option for server owners, as it ensures all users accessing the Plex Media Server can stream remotely, without an additional charge. Even if you don’t run your own Plex Media Server, a Plex Pass subscription will not only allow you to stream remotely from any server to which you have access, but also lets you make use of other Plex Pass functionality like Skip Intro and Skip Credits.
- From reading the article, sounds like you're situation won't change.
- No. You're good.
- From what I saw, they will be able to remotely stream from your PMS (if you don’t have Plex Pass) for a fee of $2/month or $20/year.

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