Plex and Jellyfin are two of the most widely adopted media server platforms for organizing and streaming personal libraries of movies, TV shows, music, and other media across devices. And while both offer similar features, the main difference lies in their licensing.
Plex Media Server is proprietary/commercial software, even though it can be downloaded for free. At the same time, Jellyfin is open source software licensed under the GNU GPL, and its server and official clients are free to download and use.
While the core server remains free, Plex Pass, which is the actual reason for this article, adds paid features such as hardware transcoding, downloads, DVR functionality, Plexamp features, and other extras for heavier users.
Recently, with the announcement on the company’s blog, Plex surprised its users by raising the Lifetime Plex Pass price from $249.99 to $749.99. The new price takes effect on July 1, 2026, at 12:01 AM UTC. And no matter how you look at it, that threefold increase is, well… hard to ignore.
The company says the price change affects only new Lifetime Plex Pass purchases. Existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders will keep access to their current benefits, while monthly and annual Plex Pass pricing will remain unchanged.
According to Plex, it had considered removing the lifetime option because recurring subscriptions better support long-term development. Instead, it will keep the lifetime plan available at a higher price.
Users still have until July 1 to buy or upgrade to a Lifetime Plex Pass at the current price of $249.99. After that deadline, the one-time plan will cost $749.99.
Plex says the price increase reflects the “real, ongoing value” of the software it is building and maintaining. The company also pointed to upcoming work on downloads, mobile playlist creation and editing, restored music and photo library support in mobile apps, and the new TV experience.
Other improvements include NFO metadata support, better server and library management on mobile and TV apps, audio enhancements, video transcoding improvements, and IPv6 support.
And now, for the fun part. The announcement quickly drew attention from self-hosting users, who often compare Plex to Jellyfin, a free and open-source media server alternative. Jellyfin’s community responded with a satirical Reddit post titled “Regarding the Jellyfin Price Increase,” authored by one of Jellyfin’s core developers, joking that the fictional “Jellyfin Premium+ One Super Unlimited (with Ads)” plan will increase to $0.00 on July 1.
It’s not hard to guess that the joke directly targets Plex’s pricing change while highlighting the central difference between the two projects. Plex combines free media server functionality with paid premium features and commercial services, while Jellyfin remains free and open source.
I’ll leave the conclusions and judgments up to each of you. Let me repeat: for those who prefer a paid, polished media server ecosystem, the monthly and annual Plex Pass plans remain unchanged. For users who want a fully open-source self-hosted stack, the price hike is likely to put Jellyfin back in the spotlight.
Finally, if you have any questions about setting up your Jellyfin media server, our guide will help you get up and running in no time.
I love Plex; it works flawlessly and have good, clean apps.
I hate subscriptions though. How about returning to versions and upgrades?
Buy it for a one time fee and get all, then when new features come you buy the upgrade if you want (if the feature is good enough). Like software used to be sold 😊 – this also gives the developer some real incentive to make the software better and better!
i have been using the free snap version of plex locally for years. I do like the extra free live channels and plex added movies and shows even if its only other people besides me that may view the extra stuff. Yea I agree that is a high price but for local use the free version works good enough. The snap version works flawless I only had to open 1 port on ubuntu to make it work and never had to mess with any permissions or other settings.
Many keep forgetting about Emby, even though I don’t use it myself, I see it as a better option over Jellyfin.
I’m one of the lucky ones with Plex, I was given a Lifetime pass, and I’ve hosted my own Plex Server for years, and the family love it also, before I had the Lifetime Pass I was paying monthly.
I can see where Plex is coming from in one respect, as the current Lifetime Pass price is far cheaper than having a re-occurring Monthly or Annual payment for the Pass.
My only concern now is Plex losing users, and if not, they just leave the Plex Players for Linux to go stale as is at this moment in time, the Plex Desktop and Plex-HTPC in both Snap and Flatpak haven’t been updated in months, and I really do hope they update these sooner rather than later? So hopefully Plex Inc. will start putting their money to good use and get the apps update on Linux, especially now that Linux is a growing force…..
I checked the snap Plex-HTPC and it same version as windows and mac and they where all released at same time. So snap version is the same as windows and mac but flatpak is not. So if you want most current use snap. They make annoucment for each update here for Plex-HTPC https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-htpc-for-mac-windows-and-linux/703783/73
The plex media server snap was updated on may 19th 2026 and that is the same day it was released. I have never used the Plex Desktop and Plex-HTPC snaps but based on description I doubt they require frequent updates. But they all show official support from plex unlike the jellyfin snap.