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 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.
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.
also, after implementing my pi-hole, I’m not crazy about the fact plex keeps trying to send out analytics.
also, after implementing my pi-hole, I’m not crazy about the fact plex keeps trying to send out analytics.
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.
What’s the name of that plugin?
You know, its not that hard to just try and google “intro skipper jellyfin” since its actually the name of it, but here you go https://github.com/ConfusedPolarBear/intro-skipper
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.
Same here.
My internet connection isn’t too spotty, but having gone through it I found it really annoying not being able to watch my own shows off my own systems just because I can’t auth to Plex’s login servers.
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.
Question about the viewing habits data. Is this only related to the Free Ad Supported Streaming content Plex pushes or are they also tracking viewing habits of users personal libraries?
There’s no way of knowing, which is the whole problem with their model and why a lot of us self host things in the first place. Even if they super duper promise not to use the data, they could be lying. And if they are actually true to their word today, that could change tomorrow.
We know the data goes to Plex.
I would not bet you ANY amount of money they’d leave any stone unturned on data sales.
That’s why none of the stuff I sign up with them is using any of my usual credentials, they do have my ip though.
There’s no way of knowing, which is the whole problem with their model and why a lot of us self host things in the first place. Even if they super duper promise not to use the data, they could be lying. And if they are actually true to their word today, that could change tomorrow.
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!
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.
As a jellyfin user, I have to say that it sometimes brings more trouble than it solves. Especially for non-admin users
Plex too 😄
Plex too 😄
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 didn’t realize how expensive plex is. Definitely going to keep with Jellyfin for now.
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.
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.
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!
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.
If you’re happy with Jellyfin I don’t see a reason to switch. But if you’re missing something, do checkout Plex.
Kodi has fallen out of fashion these days but it’s also an excellent solution, depending on your streaming needs. I’ve used Plex in the past and found it to be sluggish on Samsung’s Tizen OS. Jellyfin was a lot slicker, but also a fair bit more work to set-up if you want to stream remotely.
In the end, I put one of my pi4s to work as a Kodi box, since I only stream to my TV. It’s running LibreELEC, which is a barebones OS providing just enough to run Kodi. Media is fetched from a samba share on the home server. It’s been far better for me than Plex ever was, and way easier to set-up than Jellyfin. Kodi is essentially a standalone player, so not the right solution if you’re wanting to stream to multiple devices or remote clients. Just throwing another option out there for anyone looking.
To add to that, it is possible to use Kodi as a front-end for the plex server. This is what I do and it’s great.
I like using plex server because for my use case it makes media management super easy and it works flawlessly, I just put all my media in movies/shows folder and it takes care of the rest automatically.
I have set up Kodi with PlexKodiConnect (props to the creator, it’s fantastic) on a NUC clone plugged to my TV. Kodi is by far a much better player than the plex one, especially when playing 4K, so I get the best of both worlds.
On top of that it still leaves me the possibility to use the plex player on other devices if needed.
You can easily integrate the jellyfin to kodi, and have both - consistent library across multiple devices AND beautiful UI.
There are 2 addons for it.
One will allow you to browse your jellyfin media using the api, and to reencode on the fly, but it’s annoyingly slow to browse the library this way.
The other one will integrate your jellyfin library to local kodi database. You just need to specify the path to your samba share in the jellyfin library. It’ll fetch the metadata from jellyfin, but access the media using SMB directly. It’s pretty fast, since kodi doesn’t have to scrape the metadata itself, and it keeps itself up to date, no need for periodic library rescans.
You can easily integrate the jellyfin to kodi, and have both - consistent library across multiple devices AND beautiful UI.
There are 2 addons for it.
One will allow you to browse your jellyfin media using the api, and to reencode on the fly, but it’s annoyingly slow to browse the library this way.
The other one will integrate your jellyfin library to local kodi database. You just need to specify the path to your samba share in the jellyfin library. It’ll fetch the metadata from jellyfin, but access the media using SMB directly. It’s pretty fast, since kodi doesn’t have to scrape the metadata itself, and it keeps itself up to date, no need for periodic library rescans.
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.
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.
?! I can watch stuff locally from my Plex server even if my internet is down.
You have to disable authentication for certain ip’s / local networks. It’s not easy or straight forward, but it works.
Last time I had an outage, I was still watching from my roku and in the browser.
https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/
Trick is, it’s 4000% easier to set up when you’re on the internet.
You can insert some xml in places if you’re offline, but if you’re offline, knowing the places is incredibly difficult.
For me, the biggest selling point with Plex was that it was so readily available on TVs and other devices. I can basically throw it at almost anything. I also occasionally share access to my Plex with friends, so that ease of use carries over to them too. It’s great at getting subtitles I might be missing too, which is a big deal (my wife and I have subtitles enabled for basically everything).
tl;dr - easy onboarding for everyone and broad compatibility.
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.
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.
…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
