Plex Triples Lifetime Subscription Cost To $750 (nerds.xyz)
- Reference: 0183290635
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/19/1957248/plex-triples-lifetime-subscription-cost-to-750
- Source link: https://nerds.xyz/2026/05/plex-lifetime-pass-price-increase/
> Plex is [2]raising the price of a new Lifetime Plex Pass from $249.99 to $749.99 on July 1. That's a $500 increase for media server software. Plex [3]says it needs the money for "long-term development" and future features, but a lot of self-hosting folks are already wondering if this is basically a soft way of killing the Lifetime option without officially removing it. At nearly $750, are people just going to move to Jellyfin instead?
As for those future improvements, Plex said the roadmap includes better downloads support, restored music and photo library support in mobile apps, NFO metadata support, IPv6 support, playlist editing on mobile, audio enhancements, and transcoding improvements.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli
[2] https://nerds.xyz/2026/05/plex-lifetime-pass-price-increase/
[3] https://www.plex.tv/blog/new-lifetime-plex-pass-pricing/
Plex's business model (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood Plex. People pay a third party service for the right to access their own self-hosted server filled with pirated content? And hand their identity over to Plex while doing so?
Plex isn't for pirated content (Score:3)
I mean, some people probably use it for that, but Plex with a tuner card and everything you get with their subscription is the best streaming option out there.
Re: (Score:3)
> Plex with a tuner card
Looks a lot like that ATSC tuner/DVR which I bought for about $30.
Re: (Score:2)
> Looks a lot like that ATSC tuner/DVR which I bought for about $30.
How do you stream your ATSC tuner / DVR on your mobile phone when you're on public transit or want to watch a local football game when you're overseas? How good is the guide with your tuner?
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I don't know what the plex business model is these days but in the golden days you could still use plex without having to pay for it. The commercial offering only got you a android / apple app and the ability to stream to remote mobile devices.
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> I don't know what the plex business model is these days but in the golden days you could still use plex without having to pay for it.
You can still use Plex without paying for it. Reddit just has this meme idea you can't use Plex without hardware acceleration (just don't use some consumer NAS appliance as the server). The only two "killer features" that are behind a paywall are hardware accelerated encoding and (more recently) remote video streaming. I have a Lifetime Pass, but I've never had a system that supports hardware acceleration, and I use remote video streaming so rarely simply saving the content before I leave home on a laptop's
Re: (Score:2)
> and (more recently) remote video streaming indeed THE ONLY thing the app does that is of any use to anyone being behind a paywall is totally ok, the app is still free afterall, amirite?
Re: (Score:3)
> I've never understood Plex. People pay a third party service for the right to access their own self-hosted server filled with pirated content?
I think you're missing that Plex has been around for a long time now, and the alternatives you are thinking of were not an option back then. Jellyfin has only been a viable competitor with client support and features for a couple years now, and you still have to set up your remote access solution yourself. Plex works well for people who are less technically inclined, and the people they want to share that access with. It would be logical for there to be a large installed base of people with established serv
Re: (Score:2)
The main point of plex for me has been that it has client apps on most major platforms like Android, Roku, Apple TV, iPhone etc. So I get a nice media browsing experience that is not the hell that is DLNA that the wife and kids are willing to use without having to root my devices. I understand the situation /w Jellyfin in terms of client support is better now, but it was not there when I started using plex to build my media library.
Jellyfin (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as Plex started pushing it as a social media platform I jumped ship. Jellyfin is hilariously superior.
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Jellyfin is the goat.
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I'm surprised by this comment. I run Plex and jellyfin on the same local server with local NAS storage providing the sources for both. Media scans under the current version of jellyfin take massively longer than plex, so much so that autoscan set for 12 hour periods never completes and new media never shows up. Plex finds the new media ~instantaneously. There seem to be numerous reports along the same lines in the jellyfin tracker, but I've not seen an indication that this is already resolved or in the pro
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What kind of weirdo browses photos on his TV?
Re: Jellyfin (Score:2)
Because this is the internet, it's pron. it's always pron.
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> Media scans under the current version of jellyfin take massively longer than plex, so much so that autoscan set for 12 hour periods never completes and new media never shows up. Plex finds the new media ~instantaneously.
This is the result of the major database refactor they did for version 10.11. They have merged [1]a large PR [github.com] to address other performance issues caused by this, but scanning performance is not really included in that.
> There seem to be numerous reports along the same lines in the jellyfin tracker, but I've not seen an indication that this is already resolved or in the process of being resolved.
They aren't going to address it until the next major version after the one they have not released yet. It's only in [2]discussion stage [github.com] now. So it''s gonna be a problem for probably another year (?) given the development pace.
[1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/pull/16062
[2] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-meta/discussions/125
Re: (Score:2)
Makes me think of Boxee and why I never used it.
Exactly 10x (Score:5, Informative)
...what I paid for it a decade ago.
It still does the things I wanted it for then, but I can't say I've really used any of the new features added over the last decade, which if anything pushed "just stream my media" to the background.
Re: (Score:2)
I know everybody turns off any new features immediately upon release, but with the new(ish) agent the way some of the various bits and pieces have come together has been pretty great.
Credits are global now, so youre watching something "why does he look familiar?", you click down to the actor now it shows you their whole filmography, you can watchlist stuff right there, and even a little category 'Youve seen them in' with anything with them in any of your libraries youve watched by recent. Not just other sho
This will not drive me to Jellyfin, regardless (Score:2)
It can't, because I already switched over to Jellyfin a couple years ago! /rimshot
KI.S.S. (Score:2)
Samba share +VPN is good enough for me
i never used PlexPass (Score:2)
The synology i bought in 2016 had no hardware media codecs or GPU. So the plex pass had no inherent advabtage.
Also, it came with VideoStation. At the time plex did some things that videostation did not, and videostation did things that plex did not (in particular, folder view, and android app at no extra cost), so they complemented each other nicely. I used both.
Now, if you re-introduce video station, it is half-broken, and plex has deviated from local media streaming to streaming a la carte + live tv + gam
$750 to boost revenue and sell (Score:3)
$750 per sucker = larger bottom line. Larger revenue = sale to larger fish. Larger fish = broken contract and $750 really means one year subscription (force migration to new platform).
Plex is what? (Score:2)
A news aggregator should write blurbs like a news site, and not assume every reader knows what every proper noun is. Plex, an animal husbandry fanservice anime sharing company, ...
HMU (Score:3)
I haven't used my plex lifetime license in over 2 years and I have several friends that have moved away from their plex lifetime licenses. Would there be a resell market allowing us to sell these lifetime licenses on to someone else?
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It's stable and works well. It's simple for family members of varying technical ability to use on a streaming box/smart tv with a remote.
Jellyfin does try to be all these things, but is a steaming pile. When they changed their db schema a few months ago, I got completely broken. I had already been dealing with all their ancient .net code forked from Emby having all sorts of parsing errors. That got worse with their new db stack. The database then started corrupting itself daily requiring restoring a ba
I don't believe in 'lifetime support' (Score:3)
Instead, sell a lifetime license to a particular major version with a specified support period. If I want to run an old version that's been compromised... that's my problem. If I am happy with not having the latest codecs and plug-ins... that's my problem.
And if I'm not happy, I can buy a new license for the latest major version to fix that.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> Instead, sell a lifetime license to a particular major version with a specified support period. If I want to run an old version that's been compromised... that's my problem. If I am happy with not having the latest codecs and plug-ins... that's my problem.
> And if I'm not happy, I can buy a new license for the latest major version to fix that.
A "Lifetime license" is only the lifetime of the company with it's current owners. But your strategy will likely cost you much more on a binary only program. Particularly, if you ever want to move to newer hardware.
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> Instead, sell a lifetime license to a particular major version with a specified support period. If I want to run an old version that's been compromised... that's my problem.
You realize you've described exactly how software was sold back in the '90s and early 2000s, right? Today software companies claim they can't do that because it doesn't guarantee a regular enough revenue stream (to please their shareholders). I think the issue is more it requires them to make continuous improvements to entice customers into paying for upgrades for newer versions, rather than sitting back and collecting rent on your usage with no more effort (like Adobe). And as the software evolves it reach