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.
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.
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.
?! 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
also, after implementing my pi-hole, I’m not crazy about the fact plex keeps trying to send out analytics.
As a jellyfin user, I have to say that it sometimes brings more trouble than it solves. Especially for non-admin users
Plex too 😄
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.
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.
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!
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.
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’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
Out of curiosity, what features are you missing from #jellyfin?
Doesn’t feel as polished, the music tagging was much worse, and the UI overall was not as good, as much as I hate the"recommend" section of plex.
Also I think there was something else. At the time I was running plex in freebsd and fin was only on Linux.
I agree with you.
It works better for me though, especially because I never paid for plex pass, so I don’t have access to hardware accelerated transcoding on plex.
UI though, has never really been all that big of an issue for me. If I can navigate quickly, I am good.
I can say with certainty though that the plex roku app is way better than jellyfins.
I have to admit, I really love the skip into feature on Plex. The fact that it runs locally and just analyzes audio for it is super cool for me.
It’s above my knowledge to do it myself, but I’d love to see that implemented in jellyfin eventually.
@pyrodorobo @cyberpunk007 It’s there as a plugin, but isn’t as reliable as what Plex does (for my library at least).
The Android TV client also doesn’t support showing the button, so you have to always have it automatically skip. ☹️
Oooh I might have to play around with it some more then. I have it running alongside Plex but haven’t used it in a bit
Isn’t there an option to disable authentication for local networks anymore?
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 ;-)
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.
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.
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.
Jellyfin is better. Plex has features behind paywall
If you’re happy with Jellyfin I don’t see a reason to switch. But if you’re missing something, do checkout Plex.
