Plex no Longer Offers Free Remote Playback for Personal Media

Tried switching, but on Apple TV the Plex app just streams flawlessly unlike Jellyfin which buffers continuously.

But here is the thing: It is a wired Ethernet network between the server for both and the Apple TV, so there is absolutely no justification.

Jellyfin is going to be THE answer one day, but still has some growing to do.

Seconding Jellyfin. I installed Tailscale on all my devices, including the media server, to achieve free remote playback without worrying about trying to secure the server against the whole Internet.

My biggest frustration with Jellyfin is mostly related to using custom or self-signed SSL certs, the clients can't seem to cope with that (especially on Google TV).

Is there an Apple Watch app for Jellyfin yet? (Not saying there is one for Plex, there still isn't AFAIK.)

And for those not ready to make a full switch, they can reside side-by-side without issue.

infuse on apple tv/ios devices sonarr/radarr/bazarr dropping content on SMB share

/done

The special thing about plex for me is it is effortless. I run the server, and without any port forwarding it just works. Then my in-laws can sign up, and just like that they can stream that movie I totally own legitimately... And I don't need to walk them through entering my IP, a port number. They just sign up and it works.

All of that has a cost. It costs money to maintain, it costs money to develop, it costs money to host.

It's a commercial product. They have been inching more towards monetizing their product for a long time. Being able to pay for a lifetime is a huge win imo. I wish more companies offered that.

Plex does operate a few services that 'free' (or any) streaming may rely on depending on circumstances. Aside from auth, Plex clients that aren't able to discover the server instance locally rely on a Plex-hosted webservice to enumerate available servers. Additionally, there is a client-side config option that allows low resolution streams (720p is the ceiling, I believe) to be proxied via Plex's infrastructure. This setting is referred to as 'indirect connection', if I recall correctly.

Whatever it is, it's too much. I remember experiencing my first "Plex outage" and wondering why Plex is architected in a way that a failure on their end can stop me from streaming local media on my own PC to the same PC hosting the files, and store my watch history/metadata in a local database on my own PC.

That almost made me switch to Jellyfin, but every time I look into Jellyfin I hear people saying it's not quite fully cooked, but that's been years now they've been saying that. So I stick with the devil I know.

Without any other experience with this feature of Plex, I would've assumed that they'd proxy the data so it would work seamlessly with NAT and CGNAT setups without additional user config, but I have no idea if that's actually the case.

Uh, how about they want to make money? And they have to consistently pay their developers and other bills? Is this a serious question?

That this is absolutely a "because we can" situation. If it is using any significant resources of their own to serve it remotely, that's because they engineered it that way.

> What cost does Plex incur when I watch something from my friends server? They're not footing the bill for bandwidth that I can tell, so why is there going to be a cost associated with this beyond "we can"?

Agreed. The article says:

> Plex says that it needs to raise prices to keep up with rising costs, and that the added funds will ensure that Plex is able to keep developing new features.

and yet they also offer a lifetime pass. If I were considering paying a company that just did this, then I'm not sure I'd have much faith in the lifetime value of that lifetime pass.

Same here - and you can still buy Plex Lifetime Pass for the current rate of $119.99. If you're on the fence it goes up to $249.99 on April 29th.

From the blog: "The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders. The good news is that you can still purchase a Lifetime Plex Pass subscription at the current price of $119.99 USD* before the increase goes into effect on April 29, 2025." [0]

Also with respect to streaming costs - as long as you have a Pass there's no cost: "IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS: For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee." [0]

Had they changed that they'd probably be experiencing additional lost revenue. Either way, glad I got Lifetime back when it was sub $100. I think it's worth it for those of us who enable family members to leverage our deployments.

[0] https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/

Exactly, plus they're announcing the removal of the fee for mobile apps. So if the server owner has Plex Pass, the remote experience is now totally free.

I know it's not possible due to licensing bullshit but I'd pay a premium for TV/Movies that I owned (DRM free downloads). I have no issue paying for content, but it's a sad state of affairs that Plex is the best experience you can get for TV/Movies and a legal alternative does not exist.

I would guess a good number of plex setups cost more than "all streaming services" x "lifetime of plex server", I know some people where this is the case. They could have paid for every streaming service for over a decade for what they put into their Plex/media server.

I think they also try to provide their own content, blending your library with what they can license for you. It would be cool if they combined your library with a catalogue similar to Netflix in one app.

My pet peeve is that they focus too much on that side of the business (adding new content) while ignoring the streaming experience. There are feature requests on the forum that are being ignored. For example, I would like music artwork per song instead of per album so kids can find their songs more easily. I would also like offline content to be available in the standard catalogue without going through "Downloads". The device that plays the content should prefer that downloaded copy instead of fetching it again via a network when you play it. And so on...

As someone already said, this is probably intended to squeeze some money from the illegal content streaming farms before they close them. They are probably forced to suspend anything suspicious by the legal departments, and this way, they get a bit out of it.

It has gotten consistently better for years, the core product of streaming from server your own content from server to device is and has always worked great, and the lifetime pass is an absolute steal at $120. I paid $75 a long time ago and have gotten so much value for my money.

There is a thread of anti-Plex talk all over the place that I really don't understand. I don't think there is even any XBMC/Kodi code in it anymore.

I am a longtime user of Kodi/XBMC back to the soft-modding an OG Xbox days, and I eventually moved to Plex for the client-server model. It was and still is a great piece of software

Plex just works, it's not weird at all. Also, I prefer proprietary software. It pays my bills.