I’ve got Jellyfin up and running right now on a DS620Slim NAS and it’s running pretty good so far. I’ve seen a lot of people say they prefer Plex over Jellyfin. What are the main advantages to plex?
Jellyfin:
- Free
- Gets the job done
- Not in financial trouble
- No layoffs
- Not trying to sell you stuff
- Not selling your watch habbits
- Mainly develops features people want
Plex (paid):
- Decade of development with pretty solid pay features
- Easy sharing with friends and remote watching
- Decent clients for almost every device and more solid transcoding
- Fairly quick fixes for problems
- Great intro/credit/commercial skipping
- Only develops features that might make money
- In the middle of layoffs
- Centralized authentication makes is impossible to watch if offline or they’re offline unless you removed local authentication before it went offline.
- They sell your viewing habbits
Plex is super convenient and slimy
Jellyfin is pure and behind on features, clients and comforts.
You can get intro skipping for Jellyfin too with a plugin. It even works with Findroid, which is a native Android app for Jellyfin. I’ve been using it for a while now (maybe a month or so) and it’s always worked perfectly.
Seems like I’ll continue to stick with Jellyfin because of the offline access. My internet is very spotty where I live so it seems to be the best option.
Great list of comparison!
Worth noting that Jellyfin is not only free as in beer (if you selfhost), but also free as in Freedom i.e. open source.
Jellyfin is only getting better while Plex is primarily getting worse. You also need to pay for Plex to get many features Jellyfin provides for free.
Something I don’t see talked about enough with Jellyfin is that the UI is much nicer than Plex. It’s so clean and uncluttered, where Plex is this bizarre mess of unclear controls and advertised content.
I couldn’t disagree more and I think you’re in the minority here.
Plex UI is just leagues ahead. Also last I checked the desktop app UI and Android TV ui is pretty bad also. Its just the Web UI in a wrapper.
I’m new to both, and both are terrible if you ask me, but for different reasons. Where I see plex having a clear UI advantage is where it comes with a native app for that platform, which is less often the case of jellyfin (although it’s slowly catching up). Being open source, jellyfin has a clear advantage IMO because with enough traction, the community will be able to do wonderful things (think of winamp skins meets android custom ROM scene, or something to that effect).
And as a new comer having only seen the freemium side of plex, it has really weirded me out in some places (sponsored stuff, stuff of no use to me that I can’t disable, locked out stuff, including petty stuff like HDR encoding…) , so much so that I don’t see myself trusting them my credit card, and so I might never get to experience the “real thing”. That’s just how my perception of it is: Plex probably needs me to pay for it to become good, but it won’t be that much better (and still have many quirks) to justify it.
To each their own and all that, but for my time, I agree with you Plex still has the edge in UI by a wide margin. The advertised content is super annoying but it is possible to trim it.
also, after implementing my pi-hole, I’m not crazy about the fact plex keeps trying to send out analytics.
I used Plex for years.
As soon as I tried Jellyfin with a limited section of my library I was immediately finished with Plex.
- Jellyfin works with no internet connection with no stuffing around
- The app is far quicker and more responsive and IMO it looks world’s better
- It handles mixed media libraries better
- A vastly larger selection of my library can be played with zero transcoding in Jellyfin. Less load on my server, less load on my client, less load on my drives and a far, far more responsive UI as a result.
You owe it to yourself to try jellyfin. It’s amazing.
Plex just started requiring a login to my local server. I don’t have a plex account, no reason to get one, I only stream locally. Sounds like Jellyfin is the way to go!
Your 4th point is the opposite for me, any kind of subtitles I have on causes transcoding in jellyfin. Its the only thing stopping me from switching fully.
Set “Burn Subtitles” to AUTO and grab the Open Subtitles plugin and make sure you are logged in. Beware opensubtitles.com and opensubtitles.org are different logins.
I’d say about 95% of what I’m playing is playing without transcoding to my LG CX Oled with Jellyfin app on it.
I don’t know enough about the triggers for transcoding to know why I’m getting this result, but my server has an obscene GPU in it. I’m not sure if this is a factor.
Why not get both (free teir on Plex), and decide for yourself?
If you want another opinion from an internet stranger though:
tl;dr: Plex if want simple seamless integration, and are prepared to spend money.
Jellyfin if you want FOSS, but are prepared to spend time.
I run both Jellyfin and Plex, and I only use Plex. It’s more polished, has more clients, and has less bugs than Jellyfin. Plus, there are more community applications that are built around Plex vs Jellyfin.
For example, if you want to share your Jellyfin server, you have to manually forward ports, setup DNS records, dynamic DNS services, maybe reverse proxying, just to get easy access outside your network. Meanwhile, Plex is more or less plug and play (you might need to forward a port if the automatic port forward doesn’t work)
That being said, I have the lifetime Plex Pass, and I don’t think the monthly subscription for Plex is worth it.
I have a ton of friends that use my Jellyfin server instead of Plex, just because the Jellyfin mobile apps are free, so I keep Jellyfin running even though I don’t personally use it.
If you decide to go with Plex, I would highly recommend getting the lifetime pass instead of a subscription.
What do you think of Emby?
All the Jellyfin votes had me downloading it and before it even got downloaded you changed my mind lol. Just gonna stick with plex. I like simple and already have the lifetime sub.
I really have only ever used either of them as a DLNA server, but I was recently forced into Jellyfin and find that I like it much better than Plex. It’s faster and more reliable on my system, and for my stripped-down needs, it’s a perfect fit. I’d say that if Jellyfin is doing the job you need, you’ve got absolutely no reason to switch.
It depends what you use it for.
If you’re watching your own content within your home then Jellyfin is better. It’s free, open source and private. Your Jellyfin instance is yours and secure, and entirely under your control.
Plex’s differences are mostly behind it’s plex pass pay wall, and you sacrifice privacy using their platform. The key difference is really offline and remote viewing of content which is easier and slicker with plex (but doable with jellyfin), and the plex App maybe available a few more devices. There are also some credits and ad skipping features. That’s about it - I struggle to see the benefit in plex. The only other thing I can think of is some people prefer the interface?
I used to use Plex and got annoyed when I couldn’t view my content, which I host locally, because their login servers were down. Made me realise why did I need them so I researched a bit and switched to Jellyfin.
I already commented this on another comment here but there’s a plugin for Jellyfin to get intro skipping
I had that plug-in installed and it never skipped a single intro for me
You need to install a modified web interface (just replace some files on your server) so you get the skip button
Currently just using Jellyfin, but have used both Plex and Emby in the past.
Main reason I switched from Plex was mobile support. I also prefer FinAmp, which I use to download music for access when I’m at work, and at home I can access my entire collection through the same app.
I recommend setting up everything through Docker. I have Portainer running, which helps manage the containers. It was pretty trivial to switch what I was using by just setting up a different container. You can also have both running at the same time off the same library, and see what you prefer.
Yeah I’m running docker for my Jellyfin and cloudflare container right now. I’ll try Plex to see how it works, but my internet might suck too much for the authentication servers
I like Jellyfin quite a bit better. The UI is less cluttered and the controls make more sense. It also doesn’t phone home like plex. I do keep plex running beside it for my dad and sister. Plex has way better device support.
I have run both Plex and Jellyfin and I much prefer Jellyfin. I got sick of Plex content being interjected into my menus and feed. Plex also had issues seeing my server which was inconvenient. I now run Jellyfin with Infuse as my client. Love it so far.
Plex is great if you want to pay for features and need a media server/streaming platform hybrid
And don’t care about privacy / believes that Plex will not be hacked one more time.
I have both (they both can coexist peacefully on the same library). I use jellyfin for any watching on my phone or computer.
However, where jellyfin still really kind of falls apart is when casting to my Chromecast. Controls don’t work, subtitles are unpredictable or missing, and it’s just generally a mess.
So I use Plex for casting, and jellyfin for everything else. I bought a Plex lifetime pass ages ago, so it’s an easy call to just have them both running.
Is the Plex pass really worth the 160$ CAD? Seems like a lot of money on one application
The $160 is a lifetime pass… I pay $20/mo for Netflix. That’s $240/year. So, if you think it’s worth it for even one year, compared to something like Netflix, then it’s a pretty solid value proposition.
I bought the lifetime pass in 2014 when it was $75. Been more than happy with that decision.
Same. I don’t recall the pricing but I signed up roughly around that time. I haven’t regretted it.
I’ve used both for an extensive amount of time, and found Plex to be superior in basically every way. It’s both nicer to use, and the library is a bit easier to manage. Not to mention all the back-end things you might want to use if you’re heavy into video usage
Plex user for over a decade and my only gripe is lack of accounts when internet goes out. When I’m self hosting, I kind of consider it a baseline for something like authentication to a local self hosted server to work without an internet connection.
Also the “recommended” bullshit. What the fuck. I know hat I’m hosting. I know what I download. Why does plex feel the need to force this as the default landing page? Honestly I with jellyfin was a bit more mature cause I’d use that instead.
I totally get that tbh. The app keeps giving me notifications for recommendations of shit from services I never even connected. I use this exclusively for my local media
I personally use jellyfin and it works well enough for me to watch my movies and shows. I don’t use the app but just use the browser but there are plugins for kodi and various apps too.
Ive not used Plex myself and from what I have read it does the job too. A few friends use it and are happy. I read recently they let go of 20% of their staff.
For me it comes down to it like this: do I want a company to have control over my viewing experience with closed source software or do I want a community FOSS experience under my control. That is very important to me but it depends on your own needs.
Plex has a few more features with plex pass.
However I switched to jellyfin a few years ago because I found everything to be too limiting and dependent on them. Including the necessity to pay for codecs / playback on some of their mobile apps.
Jellyfin is a lot less polished, but it works well and you’re in control of everything.
I would recommend trying out jellyfin first. If you encounter some deal breaking issue or aren’t happy with it, check our plex.
Jellyfin is offline too. My internet died for a week and I couldn’t log into Plex…
You want to access your home media, at home, without contacting Plex servers first? Blasphemy!
I decided to go with Plex because I can use it from my roku TVs and my game consoles. I let a few friends and family members log in as well to stream and they’re primarily doing it from game consoles. Most of those people don’t even have a desktop PC. Granted, I don’t know what features in that ballpark that Jellyfin may have now, I set this up a long time ago and just haven’t really given it much thought since then.
