Plex's 200% Lifetime Pass price hike tries forcing users to another subscription

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/plexs-200-lifetime-pass-price-hike-tries-forcing-users-to-another-subscription/

by ndr42 • 2 months ago

34 32 2 months ago

xvxvx• 2 months ago

I grabbed a lifetime pass for $99 many years ago and have certainly gotten my moneys worth. Hopefully they will keep honoring existing passes.

abashore• 2 months ago

Has there been any indication that they may gate new versions or features behind more expensive plex pass subscriptions?

404mm3• 2 months ago

I haven’t heard about anything like that.

But I do hear about campaigns focused on members with poor account hygiene and afaik they get their accounts terminated.

menno-sh• 2 months ago

I cannot fathom why you'd pay $750 for Plex when Jellyfin is free.

washadjeffmad• 2 months ago

Plex has become a platform, and I imagine a certain number of their customers are revenue generating providers.

Emby still offers lifetime for $119 with a 30 device limit, but I'm not sure what it offers over Jellyfin.

Are there any advantages to Plex outside of being able to easily share and manage library access to many users? It's been a decade since I've used it.

zetsurin• 2 months ago

Excellent automatic metadata determination. Dead easy to run/setup

vitally3643• 2 months ago

I've never understood why anyone would tolerate paying any price to stream media they "own" from a server they own on a network they own to a device they own.

At this point a Plex subscription is on par with a Netflix subscription in price, but you have to bring your own media. The only value Plex provides beyond the software is a STUN proxy to connect remote devices to your server behind a residential NAT.

But Jellyfin is free and in a lot of cases it's trivial to get your server exposed to the internet. There's countless ways to do it that don't involve paying anyone anything, and more ways that cost far, far less than $750.

Perpetually gobsmacked that people are willing to pay a subscription to access their own media on their own hardware. Why not just use Netflix at that point?

404mm3• 2 months ago

Convenience. Jellyfin is becoming better and better but still lacks proper support for certain (Apple) devices, while Plex mostly just works.

That being said, Plex apps also lack proper support for HW decoding of some 4K codecs and their AppleTV situation is just plain sad (2 years without an update, no proper HW decoding).

With the Pass being $750, I’m expecting Jellyfin to become a more popular alternative than ever. I’d personally never spend this kind of money on Plex.

dmonitor2• 2 months ago

I imagine a lot of their users (like myself) use Plex because it was the best option 10 years ago and premium was $40 during sales

ezst• 2 months ago

I mean, that's probably what it is, a last squeeze while something somewhat remains of their Plex brand image, knowing the war to Jellyfin is over and lost. At that rate, Jellyfin could start a commercial entity, partner up with mullvad or whoever, and offer a STUN/TURN proxy service that they could charge cents/dollars a year and still make bank.

joshstrange• 2 months ago

Have you used Jellyfin’s clients? I’ll be the first in line to complain about some issues with the Plex client [0] but it’s been remarkably stable over the decade+ I’ve used it. I did not enjoy the Jellyfin clients (or lack there of for some platforms) the last time I tried them (2-3 years ago).

The Plex client, for all its warts, is much more user-friendly IMHO for the friends/family that might use one’s media server.

[0] I could go on and on about things like how shitty Plex is for downloading content to your phone/iPad to take on a plane/offline.

ndr42• 2 months ago

I'm relatively new to Jellyfin but for iOS and tvOS Swiftfin is a joy to use.

Edit: It's native and open source: https://github.com/jellyfin/swiftfin

Saris• 2 months ago

I use Wholfin (https://github.com/damontecres/Wholphin) on my TV and it's really nice, it's meant to be familiar to users of Plex. On my phone I use Findroid (https://github.com/jarnedemeulemeester/findroid)

Jellyfin works well enough, I switched over entirely a few months ago.

toraway• 2 months ago

Jellyfish has improved a bunch in the last few years, the front end is a lot more polished. I finally moved on from Plex a year ago after some kind of upsell nag on a basic feature after already paying for a plan.

Although realtime detection of changes on the file system is still a little flaky for me (possibly how I’m running it).

tencentshill• 2 months ago

They didn't have to become yet another second-rate streaming and rental platform. They could have remained the best home media server.

dmonitor2• 2 months ago

They had to have known that free options like Jellyfin were on their tails and pivoted to a revenue model that doesn't rely on competing with FOSS

Cider9986• 2 months ago

Can someone explain the advantage of Plex over Stremio + TB + AIOStreams to me?

gdulli• 2 months ago

For me it's that Xbox has a Plex app. I'm not willing to use Android TV devices or connect my TV to the internet.

jessyco• 2 months ago

Casting from ios is useful for me.

autoexec• 2 months ago

I'm pretty sure that Xbox is filled with ads and data collection just like an internet connected smart TV would be.

forsalebypwner• 2 months ago

The UX of Plex is unbeatable, there are no obvious signs that the content is pirated, that + a great app ecosystem is very important if you're going to be sharing with friends and family.

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48193055

mrbigbob• 2 months ago

if you are in the apple ecosystem the Infuse video player can hook into jellyfin and it has a pretty nice UI.

https://firecore.com/infuse

myvoiceismypass• 2 months ago

I also find Infuse to work better on AppleTV devices than the plex app itself for accessing plex libraries.

Plex's 200% Lifetime Pass price hike tries forcing users to another subscription

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