Plex vs Jellyfin | Home Media Server Comparison

A quick overview of the differences of managing Plex and Jellyfin Home Media Servers - primarily from the perspective of of a Linux administrator.

[LearningTech]

Watching this at the end of July in 2023 and crazy seeing all the features Jellyfin has now that either weren’t available or “soon” during this presentation is a solid testament to the community building it out, and also shows how much of a quality competitor is still is to plex. I recently switched to only Jellyfin and am happy with its use so far

[Ionknomen]

Plex is much user friendly. But the only reason I dropped it for Jellyfin is simple. It's because you can stream hi-res audio through Jellyfin. As someone who is into audio. This is a big win.

[richardlee]

we are so lucky someone made a nice presentation and shared it online. Thanks

[thomasbarca]

I’ve used Jellyfin for a while and I love it, after getting frustrated with plex I tried others and I found Jellyfin is the best option

[HardcoreNacho]

You can allow local connection without authentication to allow the ability to use the server when offline. Very easy to do.

[vz_]

Having run Plex for a few years but getting my patience tested when it comes to stalling when I fast forward or rewind, had been looking into Jellyfin with the hopes of running it as a fallback; exactly the use case you recommended here. Looking forward to giving it a spin.

[johnknightiii]

I don't know why I didn't think of using both. Plex is great for the client app on my chromecast and sharing to family. Jellyfin has all the fun plug-ins. Thanks for the video!

[RONNIEAST]

Thanks for the info Jared. I currently run a Plex server and thinking about setting up Jellyfin as well

[franklinan]

Great video ! Thanks for your structured presentation. Congrats

[Bellthorian]

Question, in my personal media collection I have all 4 seasons of Spartacus. Neither Plex or Jellyfin "See" the first season. The files are there but neither media server can see them. The mini series Shogun, Plex doesn't "See" it but Jellyfin does. Does anyone know why and or how to fix that?

[MidnightMustang]

You can still directly access Plex content by assigning your Plex PC's/server's IP into their respective apps, and still access content with the internet kicked out.

[oldaccount]

Hopefully in 5 or so years jellyfin will surpass Plex in terms of more available clients, a better download/sync option on mobile device, a player that can handle more codecs and overall a more polished expiernce.

[Hussein.Private]

thank you very much bro, excellent slides

[johanklausen]

thanks for a good comparison of plex and jellyfin

[PANDA-fvbi]

I want to use Jellyfin but it’s having issues on my fire stick. I can’t fast forward or rewind anything. Fire stick is my main concern since I always watch movies on my tv.

[TomMartinek]

No Apple TV client? Unfortunately that's a deal breaker for me.... I'll check back in a few years.

[RichardErkens]

I have Plex and tried jellyfin on my windows system.
Results:
Needed 3 installs to finally get it working.
One movie folder added without a problem, after that no folders I try to add show up.
Installed app doesn't find the server automatically on the network.
Tried 5 different movies where jellyfin was only be able to play one.
So the windows version is not that good in my opinion.
I would suggest Kodi or Plex with a lifetime pass as they work as expected

[garybarnacle]

You can use plex without the internet on your local network all you have to do is enter the players ip address into the server settings and it works fine and when setup like this you dont need to login so some older tv sets that have plex apps but dont have the ability to login still work

[lollington_bear]

I've ben trying out Jellyfin over xmas, and it was very fast and had a nice look and feel. The features and configuration options are way better than Plex for sure. However! The login page needs improvement to make it more slick and easy for no technical users (it needs to present a keypad to enter a pin not a full keyboard). The Samsung App has to be sideloaded, and doesn't support the pause button on the remotes. On all devices Jellyfin had an issue where it wanted to transcod several videos that plex plays on the same device without the need to transcode. So in short I think Jellyfin has a way to go before it is mature enough to universally replace Plex, but I really liked it and I wanted it to work, so I'll be trying it again next year for sure.

[tomsontung]

thank you for the video, your summery on the features are nice and details. It will be even better if you are able to compare the client software as well. I recently tested both in the QNAP NAS, Jellyfin works fine within in the NAS via Docker. After a week of comparison, I decided to stick with PLEX even I‘m not a paid user. PLEX clients are just snappier and there are cases that PLEX client can do direct streaming while Jellyfin requires heavy transcoding (I tested with H.265 4K videos.)