this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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I don't know why anyone would pay that instead of using Jellyfin. I've had my server up for years now and it works great.
Last I looked, jellyfin auth and public facing security were less than ideal.
How far has that come in the last few years? I have plenty of people using my Plex and it's been secure. I had heard a public facing Jellyfin wasn't super secure.
Honestly, 95% of the reason I use Plex is so I don't have to manage user passwords and troubleshoot issues for my friends and family. I just grant access.
This. I run a Kubernetes cluster and self host tons of shit . . . but I do NOT want to be dealing with client issues for Boomer relatives and worrying about securing servers that a Samsung TV needs to auth with
I moved from the default jellyfin login method to using Authentik as the identity provider. Now its part of my homelab setup where all services have SSO, and I don't have to create/manage an account for each person for each service.
Does that break Jellyfin apps on smart TVs or media devices?
A lot of people seem to have concerns with how Jellyfin handles access control and some have stated that the developers marked some major issues as “won’t fix”. Is there somewhere I can catch up on that?
LDAP works fine, OIDC not so much, only the web client would work.
There are still talks around making OIDC a first class citizen and IIRC it is planned as per the feature page but I guess the major core upgrade around the DB took a lot of attention the last 6-12 months.
But in the meantime I've just spun up an LDAP outpost for my Authentik that my Jellyfin connects to. It breaks MFA but otherwise it works. It may be a bit confusing for users that they log in at jellyfin.site.com but anything user-related like updating password is at authentik.site.com and requires an extra login.
I haven’t checked in on Jellyfin for a while now, but don’t they still have issues with hardware transcoding support?
Not to mention the lack of software clients on other platforms for just playback that Plex has been established on for years and even multiple device generations like with PlayStation, Roku, Fire Stick, etc.?
Also you have to configure your own reverse proxy / Tailscale set up to securely access a content library remotely, right - as opposed Plex’s relatively simpler remote access configuration?
Surprise, surprise, a paid product with salaried developers has more features than a volunteer project!
More people using Jellyfin, more people who will contribute, through code or donations. It's worth a downside to swap over.
Especially given the new "lifetime" price. More people will switch to Jellyfin. Plex lifetime might be shorter.
Hopefully that gets better - I run both side by side pointed at the same folders so the exact same media is available in both. I offer all my friends the choice and list every alternate app I know of, inevitably they all prefer Plex.
Especially on non-GPU systems, Jellyfin is slower at transcoding than Plex. I don’t know the internals, but I have both running in the sam machine, and Plex is always noticeably more responsive. Not by a huge margin, but still it is.
I have zero experience with those two products but when it comes to transcoding there are various toggles that affect the quality and speed.
It looks also like commercial products generally optimize for speed while open source tends to be more concerned about quality.
Of course this could be completely wrong in this case but that's the general tendency I noticed. Do they allow to change settings?
They do, and I experimented with both, but wasn’t able to get better performance from Jellyfin compared to Plex. Always running on the same hardware. Still run both though, just in case.
I have not personally experienced any issues with hardware transcoding. My server is an old Dell Optiplex and I use clients on Linux, Android, Roku and Shield.
Yes you are correct about remote access and if that was a priority for me, I would happily learn that part instead of paying for Plex.
What kinds of issues? I put an Intel Arc in my server and it's working fine AFAICT.
I have an ~80GB movie that I can watch on a TV that can't even handle the data rate for that file, nevermind the codecs.
But if the couple minutes to click "this client can't handle anything over 60Mbps x264" is too much work, then by all means keep paying for Plex. Or "hypothetically" find a smaller copy of that movie.
I'm always amazed by the number of people who absolutely can't leave Plex because they've got 14 grandparents streaming 8k rips all day every day.
It's essentially a one time fee for an indefinite service of handling the vpn side of the setup.
I use Jellyfin on my local network and plex externally because I don't know how to route specific traffic with openvpn on my phone and can't be bothered switching it off and on when streaming things 😅
I'm not sure how it's sustainable, and am surprised they still offer the life pass at all though.
I guess a lot of people buy it who don't need it?
I still probably wouldn't pay the current price for it though, I got it about a decade ago lol.
Oh also plexamp has a better UX than jellyfin for music, but I don't think that alone would justify the current price.
Tailscale is the answer to easily and remotely access jellyfin and your server. Its easy to setup and very secure.
Dude seriously it's so much easier than anything else. For a personal media server with remote access, jellyfin + tailscale on an old computer you may have laying around plugged into your router is all you need
Yep, exactly what I've been telling people. And then they complain that tvs dont have the ability to have the tailscale app on them. So, then buy a cheap android box, even an Onn 4K from Walmart would work for like 25 bucks and install tailscale and jellyfin on it.
True again. That's what I run upstairs and downstairs on my TVs. If I'm not mistaken, you should be able to use RPis for the same sort of thing if you really really didn't wanna touch any Google stuff, which I would understand.
I also totally get people having slightly different uses for their media servers, like maybe they share their collection with friends and family members who aren't as tech literate/don't wanna use a Google TV when they already stream everything else on their PS5 for example. For those purposes, it has especially made sense historically to go with Plex.
I didn't find it that easy to set up 😅
but I'm sure I would find it easier if I was more motivated e.g. saving $750 by setting it up 😅
It really is easy to set up though lol. I didn't know anything about self hosting about 2 years ago. There's so many guides and tutorials to use to help set it up too.
You're not wrong. I would just rather learn Headscale or nginx or any other option than pay that Plex subscription. But I'm sure there are people out there who have extremely valuable time and wouldn't hesitate to fork over 750.
ah yeah, I paid $50, not $750 😂