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?
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.
Me personally, I like Jellyfin. Im not using it daily atm. But when i was, i used it purely for streaming music and it was great for that.
LTT did a video on both a while back and its kind of a toss up imo. Depends on what you care about. Id recommend that video.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/jKF5GtBIxpM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
What are the main advantages to plex?
AFAIK they offer more apps resp. apps for more platforms. Apart from that, nothing really. Maybe a little more idiot-proof.
This is pretty much it, Plex offers far more client apps that are full featured and they make it super easy to setup and use both as an admin and a user. Especially for things like OTA TV where they provide the guide data once it’s setup (which is why it’s a paid option). I’d move to JellyFin in a heartbeat if they’d support OTA and DVR playback on AppleTV.
If Jellyfin had a good Xbox app I would switch immediately.
In theory it’d be possible to make a Jellyfin UWP app, of course nobody’s made one yet. Maybe it could be you ;)
…they do but, you have to supply the schedule. I was using a Home run to pipe OTA tv in but, have since moved to a IPtv provider. Works very very well
The problem I have is there is no way to playback live tv on AppleTV which is what we use throughout our home. Plex just works and has wife approved first party apps for pretty much everything.
The FOSS crowd will eventually pop in and try sway you strongly the other way, but at the end of the day, it really boils down to bigger platform, more app choices and more supported platforms. If you expect anyone other than yourself to be using it, on anywhere else other than your own equipments, but just don’t quite know who or where yet, then Plex might give you a better running chance in supporting that use case. Otherwise, choose whichever one floats your boat more.
The FOSS crowd will eventually pop in and try sway you strongly the other way
That’s pretty clear from the comments/upvotes, but I don’t think it’s undeserved either. Jellyfin is the underdog that came to take the slack left by Plex growing discontent, does a decent job overall, and gets measurably better over time.
What’s interesting to me is to think about what Plex could do that an active community around jellyfin couldn’t, and the answer is not technical, but commercial, and along the lines of more partnership and integrations with hardware or streaming platforms, for which I (and most people here, apparently) have no use. YMMV of course.
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.
Interesting that I find number 3 different for me. I have a very heterogeneous library and I find plex better at choosing when to transcode and what quality to transcode.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
Jellyfin if you do not like being spied on by your self hosted media library. Plex if you do like being spied on by your self hosted media library.
Also - Plex if you want Audiobooks, because the app Prologue is 🔥
My vote will always side with the open source community so please take that with a grain of sand. I much prefer Jellyfin because of its status as an open source project.
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 use Plex for (1) home library, (2) Live TV (HDHomerun), and (3) music (PlexAmp).
(1) Jellyfin is just as capable for home streaming of my home library.
(2) It would take approximately 15 seconds to show my live TV when I switch stations. Plex is almost instant and Plex has ad supported channels similar to a PlutoTV, et. al. I watch Scripps News and NBC Now along side my locals.
(3) There simply is no app as good as PlexAmp.Finally, setting up Plex for outside access was dead simple, Jellyfin takes some effort.
Do you know how PlexAmp compares to airsonic-advanced/navidrome/subsonic? That’s definitely an area where jellyfin is weak but great alternatives are out there.
I haven’t used those apps in a long time, so my experience is pretty dated. PlexAmp is very very good though.
I switched from Plex to Jellyfin several years ago and haven’t really looked back. Overall I just didn’t like the direction plex kept going (pushing shit streaming services, central auth, paywalling features), and dropped it even though I grabbed a lifetime plex pass back in the day. The only thing I miss about plex was the ease of developing a custom plugin for it since you could pretty much just drop python scripts in there and have it work, though their documentation for plugin development was terrible (and I think removed from their site entirely).
I didn’t realize how expensive plex is. Definitely going to keep with Jellyfin for now.
I still only use the free version of plex. I don’t stream to other people but I am pretty sure the option to share my library is still there. I do stream from two other libraries on occasion.
Great choice! Am a happy Jelly user with a useless lifetime plexpass ;-)
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 found what really helps Jellyfin on my Chromecast is setting the player manually. There’s a setting to make it ask which player to use when starting a show and if one doesn’t work, 99% of the time the other one works fine.
Sometimes switching players doesn’t fix subtitles for me, in those situations I usually have to toggle subs a few times or restart the stream and they actually work.
In my opinion it’s a minor enough inconvenience given Jellyfin is 100% free and open source, whereas Plex is tracking you and charging you. But of course maybe your media is in some more difficult format than mine.
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.
