When it comes to home media servers, the most popular choice has been Plex for quite some time. I use Plex at the moment, and I even pay for an (optional) Plex Pass. Yet, just because Plex is the most popular option doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for you.
There’s plenty of competition in the media server game, and one of these five free Plex alternatives may turn out to be a better fit for you.
Jellyfin
Credit: Jellyfin
Jellyfin is almost as well-known as Plex, but there’s a huge philosophical difference between them. It’s a completely free and open-source project built with volunteer labor. It’s effectively a drop-in replacement for Plex since you set up the software on the computer that hosts your media and then use a client on the device where you want to watch the content.
One important difference comes from your choice of client. Jellyfin works with a mixture of official and third-party clients, rather than exclusively proprietary clients the way Plex does.
There is decent feature parity with Plex, including the ability to pull metadata for media, as well as hardware transcoding and remote streaming that are not locked behind a paywall the way they are in Plex. If you want the most important features of the paid Plex plan for free, Jellyfin is the way to go.
Kodi
Credit: Corbin Davenport / Kodi
Kodi is a completely different beast when compared to Plex and its equivalents. Kodi started out as XBMC (Xbox Media Center), which was a homebrew app for the original Xbox. This was during the era when HTPCs (Home Theater PCs) were still in fashion, and XBMC effectively turned your Xbox into an HTPC.
Over time the project developed into something that runs on pretty much anything these days, but it’s still effectively an HTPC solution. Your media files are local to the machine that’s running Kodi. So it’s perfect if you have a mini PC hooked up to your TV with some large hard drives installed.
Kodi also offers a vast galaxy of add-ons that expand its functionality, which includes access to some streaming resources online. Just be careful, since there are add-ons that are not approved that stray over the line of legality.
Emby
My Emby home screen.Credit: Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek
Emby has premium features like Plex, but it’s much more minimalist in comparison. The core media server features are free and easy to self-host. You can manage libraries, stream locally, and organize content without paying a cent.
If you do decide to go for the Emby Premiere option, you’ll get:
- Offline media download to your client.
- DVR features.
- Access to Android, Fire TV, iOS, and console apps. Notably, the PS5 is not officially supported.
- Hardware-accelerated transcoding.
- CarPlay and Android Auto support.
- Cover art.
- Content conversion.
Now, you might notice that Emby actually has paywalled some features that are free on Plex, but the lifetime Premiere price is only $119 as of this writing, whereas a lifetime Plex Pass is $250, meaning it’s cheaper as a one-off to unlock it all forever.
Credit: Universal Media Player
Universal Media Server takes it back to basics and offers a free DLNA, UPnP, and HTTP/S server that runs on all the major operating systems. It’s laser-focused on streaming media, transcoding it if needed, and supporting as many formats as possible. They do take the “universal” part of it quite seriously, it seems.
It supports a long list of client devices and offers a rich web interface to access your media. Perhaps most importantly for many of you reading this, UMS emphasizes minimal configuration. So if you just want to get up and running, it’s a grand choice.
Credit: Media Monkey
MediaMonkey has a somewhat different vibe than Plex, Emby, and the rest. The emphasis isn’t only on allowing you to play your collection of digital media files but also on really helping you organize it. It’s designed to handle truly large media collections, so if you’ve been ripping your CDs and DVDs for decades but never bothered to organize them properly, this might be the solution for you.
While Plex allows for some file management on the remote server, MediaMonkey will organize the files themselves and let you delete duplicates. It will also rename the files themselves after looking up the missing metadata so that if you port your media elsewhere in the future, all the organizing work you’ve done is preserved and ready for the next platform.
MediaMonkey can handle video, but it’s mainly designed as a music streaming solution, so it’s more directly in competition with Plexamp. There’s a free version for personal use, but you can buy a Gold license that unlocks features such as high-integrity CD-ripping, automations for how your collection should be organized, fine control over encoding quality, and unlimited casting, whereas the free version is limited to 30 minutes.
It’s not for everyone, but if you’re looking for a music server, it’s a great option, as long as you’re using Windows or Android, that is. You can sync your music with Apple devices, too.
Managing and enjoying your own media is happily coming back into fashion, and if you’ve grown tired of Plex and would like a little more control than the most popular media hosting platform provides, I’m sure one of these alternatives will end up being just what you were looking for.
