I think it’s important to recognize what Plex is saying with this announcement: their current business model isn’t sustainable. That means those who already have lifetime passes are vulnerable to Plex going away. If/when that happens, what will those users do then? That’s the conversation worth having now.
this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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A gentle reminder that Jellyfin exists to those thinking of alternatives.
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(27 replies)
Jellyfin
I wish jellyfin and the apps could ship with something like wireguard setup by default so people that use the jellyfin apps could instantly watch media outside their house without learning what wireguard/tailscale is
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(8 replies)
Never used Plex. Jellyfin has always met my needs, so I never bothered to try it.
Plex has been around quite a while longer than JF. Before JF, the only way to really have a "self-hosted Netflix" was with Plex, so there are a lot of us who built our long-standing media setups around that.
That said, I have a JF instance running and matched almost 1:1 with Plex specifically for this situation, so I'm going to start pivoting everyone to that as I wind Plex down.
Meh, I've used dlna with PS2 over 20 years ago. Not exactly the same, but for my needs essentially the same.
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there are a lot of us still on Plex that hadn't reached the threshold of issues vs effort that would motivate us to migrate to something like jellyfin.
looks like we've arrived.
Why not run both? That's what I do, then if Plex is an issue for someone I can make them a Jellyfin account
I already have a lifetime Plex pass so this isn't an issue for me. 6 months from now when Plex decides my lifetime pass has a new expiry, then I'll be motivated.
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I have the lifetime pass, bought it for like $80 many moons ago.
looks like we’ve arrived.
Agreed, this is the tipping point. This is where we will see Plex start to abandon the lifetime pass in favor of "imaginary money line go up forever" subscriptions.
I haven't. I bought lifetime Plex Pass something like 15 years ago. A price change doesn't effect me. It's all their shitty updates and removing of features that makes me keep an eye on Jellyfin. I already have a sync setup for my watch status and a couple of my main users. Jellyfins apps are still worse.
Jellyfin has lots and lots of tutorials, fyi. it’s not as intimidating as it seems once you get going with it.
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(22 replies)
I've gotten my money's worth out of the $74.99 I paid for Plex Pass Lifetime several years ago. If they ever get rid of my Plex Pass and try to say "Lifetime didn't actually mean Lifetime", I'll be gone.
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I know that whales exist, but seriously... Who is into self hosting but also into dropping $750 on a service that can end on a whim?
They dont want you to buy lifetime they want you to pay month to month.
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The Jellyfin vs Plex thing always struck me as odd. As in - why are we holding JF to a different standard to (say) Immich, Syncthing, Pi-hole or any one of a thousand different programs people self host?
Yes, JF ships multi-user accounts and client apps etc. I get it, "multi-use" is implied, so the comparison isn't totally unfair. But there's a difference between 'this feature exists' and 'this is the primary purpose of the tool'.
The fact that you CAN share it externally doesn't mean everyone running JF is doing that, or that it should be the benchmark the whole project is judged by.
To me, self host means "I host it, myself" not "I host it and then pretend to be Netflix for family and friends". If that's the use case, then of course, Plex away.
It's cool that you CAN share JF externally, and it's cool that Plex does that differently / better. We shouldn't hold one to the standards of the other.
The company's blog post also described a number of improvements they plan to make
After you pay: "oops, we won't"
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