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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My experience with Jellyfin have not been great. The mobile app is just not working well enough
Plex has lots of customisation available (which I prefer) but is a little harder to get running in my experience. I’d say, install them both and see what you like most. Do start with Jellyfin as it’s easy to install.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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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.
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.
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!
Plex for sharing with others. Jellyfin for personal use only.
Why? I share my jellyfin server with others too…
Plex is preinstalled on most smart tvs’s. And in ones with very limited app stores.
Also easy for others to make their own plex account, and you just give access to that user through the UI.
jellyfin requires more on the client side. Beyond what my mum can do on her own.
My streamers just needed to buy a Google Chromecast with android TV.
Just a barrier many won’t cross.
No media then :)
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.
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
one main question should also be, do you want to selfhost or not.
because plex is not selfhosted imo due to their login servers.
I mean it is self-hosted… Everything but the Authentication component. That doesn’t make it not self-hosted
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 ;)
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.
https://youtu.be/jKF5GtBIxpM
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.
My experience with Jellyfin have not been great. The mobile app is just not working well enough
Plex has lots of customisation available (which I prefer) but is a little harder to get running in my experience. I’d say, install them both and see what you like most. Do start with Jellyfin as it’s easy to install.
Not sure how long ago you tested it, but there is now an alternative Android app called Findroid which I like much more than the official app.
I’ve found my media I play over the network looks grainy on some devices using Jellyfin. But it’s probably settings I have wrong
Been quite a while! Thanks for telling me though, I will test it out when I get to it!
I used Plex for years.
As soon as I tried Jellyfin with a limited section of my library I was immediately finished with Plex.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Pour que no dos?
??
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.