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.
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
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 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.
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.
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
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
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 ;)
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.
The antenna and music support is better on Plex imo, but I think both require to pay for premium
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.
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.
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 :)
I have both. I never touch Jellyfin. Plex is just better experience in every way. If Jellyfin was as good as plex I would use that because I agree more with the philosophy.
