this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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The reason Plex is as popular as it is is because of their infrastructure and software that lets users stream video and music remotely on any device at the press of a button. That costs money to build and maintain.
It certainly doesn't cost what they're charging. They have a cache, a relay and an auth service. I'll grant them some more allowance for an active security team. They've wasted manyears on features nobody wants and have eliminated any feature that costs them any amount of money to maintain if they can't make money off it. (sync, client serve, yada yada)
That's how services and products work. If they sold their product at cost, they'd go bankrupt. They're actually charging peanuts for the service they provide.
Their entire infrastructure required to do that proxy and caching is at most 10k a month. Thats a couple thousand users.
What you're actually paying for is their research and development of all that add ridden content they're trying to shove down your throat. Then selling your data, and selling you and your watchers ads.
That's some really expensive peanuts you're suggesting
Really? Cuz Jellyfin literally does the same thing and doesn't cost money.
Jellyfin does not handle NAT punching automatically to point that a non technical user can install an app on their TV, see one or more libraries, and connect to my server across the Internet. This is the biggest problem that Plex solves compared to Jellyfin. I can't expect my parents to install Tailscale or make any changes to their network.
That being said I use Jellyfin. I just don't share it with my friends.
JellyFin does not do the same thing. JellyFin doesn't securely allow users anywhere in the world on any network to stream your media.
Really? Because folders on a hard drive and the OS's networking does all that... what am I missing?
Remote streaming securely is what you're missing.