https://jellyfin.org/

As a result I imagine more users will look at other offerings such as Jellyfin.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
https://jellyfin.org/

I'm not pirating a bunch of shows just to pay Plex for the privilege of watching it.

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.

Hellooooo jellyfin!

Only use open source software

If you don't like the price there's always jellyfin.

Got to say that I have been very happy with it.

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

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 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.

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.

So glad i switched to jellyfin half a year ago

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

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.

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

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 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.

Another company fucked by executives.

Well, looks like my decision to stick with Kodi and never bother with Plex is about to pay dividends.

The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience

How stupid do they think we are?

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

Why do people use this when Jellyfin exists?

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?

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!

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 .

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.

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.

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

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.

sometimes good software is worth paying for

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")

Subscriptions are a non-starter for me

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

Why would anyone even used Plex since we have jellyfin?

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!

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.

If I didn't already have my lifetime pass, I'd use Jellyfin as my primary media server platform instead of Plex.

One of these days though, I'm sure Plex will make a mistake serious enough that it impacts me, and I'll end up switching to Jellyfin as my main media server platform.

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.

I dumped Plex years ago even though I paid for it. Too many issues with it. Constantly losing movie folders, unable to stream to the device I wanted to watch on, wrong codec, wrong sound, etc, etc. I gave up. I’m sure it worked fine for most, but it got to be a pain. Switched to Jellyfin and a DDNS address and have had zero problems since. And it’s free.

Man, my Jellyfin subscription just rose in price too.

If it costs them money to run it, it makes sense?

What a load of BS.

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.

"A subscription"

Its the same Plex pass subscription for people who don't want to read a clickbait article.

" When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge"

So as a plex pass holder it shouldn't affect any of my (current?) users? Am I reading this right?

edit: Seems I'm good.

I’m inferring from the language of the post that OP is against this policy change, but I’m not sure I follow the argument. Why is it problematic that Plex is asking for money?

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.

Huh, I was somewhat excited about the elimination of the playback limit for mobile apps (we are in 2025 ffs!) and then re-read that this will be only applicable for the subpar preview version once it is released... Which doesn't fucking has the watch together feature lmao.

The only good news in a nutshell is that I am still a Plex Pass Lifetime User, so in a nutshell I don't get good news lol.

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?

On one hand, it looks like this only applies to streaming from a remote server where neither the server owner or the user has Plex pass, so lifetime holders or committed server operators with a subscription can continue to provide access to all our non paying friends. It isn't explicit whether non-paying users people who port forward / do reverse proxying themselves are affected but it sounds like they are, which is utter BS since direct connections hardly cost Plex anything.

It is however nice that they're trading this for getting rid of the mobile unlock BS - it was always awkward explaining to friends that they could watch anywhere except on their phone unless they paid $5.

On the other hand, one notable side effect is that all non-lan streaming will now be associated with a paying server owner or a paying user, which makes it impossible to use Plex to share pirated media without a user on either end giving up PII / payment information. I have a gut feeling that this is an extension of the previous piracy crackdown on OVH(?) hosted servers meant to ensure they have the identity of all users who may be engaged in selling access.

Overall, yeah another reason to move to JF. I paid for lifetime more than a decade ago so I'm going to keep using Plex until my non-paying friends start to have issues, but I really hope this pushes more investment into JF apps. I really need a good android TV app that supports server transcoding (IIUC findroid's beta TV builds are direct stream only).

Just saying...

Can't wait to see a 40 minutes rant on LTT where he will feel betrayed and teach everyone how to use jellyfin

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

Any Kodi users here?

Well that's the beginning of the end for them.

I'm about half-way off the platform already (and I'm a lifetime subscriber)

The only thing I go back for is Roku use (better app), PlexAmp (better app) and offline viewing. I don't have to go off JF for those, but it's a lot better on Plex.

But it's not so much better than I can't protest.

This sucks ass. I'm a lifetime Plex Pass holder, so this doesn't affect me yet, but who's to say they won't fuck over lifetime users sooner rather than later?

Honestly, this made me consider setting up Jellyfin. What the fuck?

So I have a lifetime pass. But my family members have their own accounts. Will they be able to watch from their house to my server now or will they need to pay? Cause if that’s so guess I’m switching to jellyfin and teaching them how to work it.

Would Tailscale/ZeroTier work as a workaround for this or do you think Plex would also put that behind a paywall?

Bro what

If the server you are stealing movies from has a pass you still don't need to pay

They could have worded this better

Plex borking itself a year ago for me is the best thing that could've happened. Long live jellyfin

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.

I was worrying about this change because my Plex server provides free streaming for several of my friends and family and I didn't want them to have to start paying for it. The whole point was to get them away from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.

But this sounds like, since I'm already a Plex Pass subscriber, my remote viewers will still be able to access my stuff for free. Do I have that right? Because if so, this change is just business as usual for me.

I really need to stop being lazy and swap to Jellyfin....

Jellyfin needs to partner with someone people can pay a very low and reasonable and/or one-time fee to enable remote streaming without the fuss of setting up either dangerous port-forwarding or the complexity of reverse proxies (paying for a domain-name, the set-up itself including certificates, keeping it updated for security purposes).

And no a VPN is not a solution, the difficulty for non-technical users in setting up a VPN (if it's even possible, on smart-tvs it's almost always not, and I don't think devices like AppleTV and other streaming boxes often support them) is too high and it's an unwanted annoyance even for technical users.

I'm not talking about streaming video's through someone else's servers or using their bandwidth. I'm talking about the connection phase of clients and servers where Plex acts like an enhanced dynamic DNS service with authentication. They have an agent on the local media server which sends to the remote web service of the third party the IP address, the port configured for use, the account or server name, etc. When a client tries to connect they go to this remote web service with the servername/username info, the web service authenticates them then gives them the current IP address and any other information necessary. It then sends some data to the local Jellyfin server about the connecting client to enable that connection and then the local media Jellyfin server and the client talk directly and stream directly.

Importantly the cost of running this authentication and IP address tracking scheme would be minimal per Jellyfin server. You could charge $5/year for up to 20 unique remote clients and come out ahead with a slight profit which could be put back into Jellyfin development and things like their own hosting costs for code, etc. Even better if they offer lifetime for this at $60-$80 they'd get a decent chunk of cash up-front to use for development (with reasonable use restrictions per account so someone hosting stuff in Hetzner or whatever and serving 300 people with 400 devices will need to pay more because they're clearly doing this for profit and can afford to throw some more money at Jellyfin).

Until Jellyfin offers something that JUST WORKS like that it's not going to be a replacement for Plex, whatever other improvements they offer to users it's still a burden for the server runner to set up remote streaming in a way that isn't either incredibly dangerous (port forwarding) OR either involves paying money to third parties AND/OR the trouble of running your own reverse proxy and/or involves walking users through complicated set-up process for each device that you have to repeat if you change anything major like your domain name when using a VPN.

If you want to keep using plex and remote it’s important to you, they usually have pretty good deals on pass from time to time. I don’t regret my lifetime pass - I still feel like it’s a pretty solid app and service all things considered- but if I didn’t have the pass already I would be a bit pissed as well ngl.

I don’t like it, but it’s a pragmatic decision.

Hosting for a simple website can be as little as a few bucks a month. That’s easy for any project to absorb, even if they are open-source with no one pulling a paycheque.

Streaming requires high-performance, high-bandwidth machines that cost anywhere from several dozen dollars to several hundred dollars a month. You build a resilient high-availability network, and you could easily be looking at several tens of thousands of dollars a month.

That isn’t easy to absorb, even for a for-profit company with clearly-defined revenue streams.

Some people want everything for free, but free doesn’t pay the bills.

Full disclosure: I don’t use the streaming feature. I prefer to grab actual copies to drop onto my NAS. I also don’t share to friends and family, as I am the only one I know of who uses Plex.

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

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.

And that’s why open source is best.

Hypothetically, if I have tailscale setup, would that be a viable workaround since everything looks local on my tailnet?

If you are currently a Plex user i highly suggest at least putting together an exit strategy. I am in the process of it but it's rough. In fact, i think Plex might be the last thing i replace with a FOSS solution.

remote streaming rarely works for me so I won't be losing anything.

I thought that was already true

Glad I went Emby.

Well that's disappointing

Would this affect self hosters?

Never used it. Started with Kodi and moved to Jellyfin when I learned of it forking from Emby.

So then Photoprism is going to lock my photos and ask my mom for money to see them?

Its selfhosting, not freehosting for yet another asshole company.

I still remember sticking files on an apache server and openly sharing that with friends. Not had a need to do that lately but I can always start doing it again if necessary.

So it looks like the server will need plex pass in order to stream to users, or the user can pay about $2/mo to stream from servers without plex pass. I feel like this is fine, doesn't really come across as greedy or egregious.

I've set up plex, overseer, sonaar, and radaar in such a way that my family and friends can request and watch videos on my server. I use plex because it's the easiest for my less than tech savvy family to use, as it's just an app on their TV.

I have never paid a cent for Plex while Plex has allowed me and my family to save hundreds in subscription fees, so I'm feeling rather ambivalent about this new requirement for me to get plex pass in order to stream to the small horde of people I serve. I was considering getting plex pass to unlock hardware acceleration for transcoding anyway.

I've considered Jellyfin, but plex has a ton of features that allow for scripting that keeps me from having to manually do maintenance. Not to mention how hard it would be to get people like my father to use Jellyfin on his TV, last I checked there isn't even TV app available for most platforms.

Fuck this. What the absolute fuck lmao they just decided to kneecap their entire business model.

I was even going to get a lifetime subscription later this year when they usually put the price down. Not anymore

Well that fuckin sucks dick.

If this is enough to push you away from Plex but you’ve tried Jellyfin and it didn’t quite do it for you, try https://emby.media/

It is the software Jellyfin is forked from and bridges the gap between the freedom of Jellyfin and the polished look and function of Plex.

I'm seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.

Seems reasonable. I'm a lifetime Plex pass holder, so it won't affect me or the one person I let access my server lol