Open Source Plex Alternatives

Jellyfin puts you in control of managing and streaming your own media, delivering it from a dedicated server to end-user devices through a range of apps. It descends from the 3.5.2 release of Emby and was ported to .NET for full cross-platform support, and it exists as the alternative for anyone tired of premium tiers and hidden agendas.

This repository holds the backend server, one of many projects under the Jellyfin organization. The server also hosts the static files of the separate web client by default, so a build needs those files either compiled from the web repository or copied out of an existing installation.

Setting up a development environment has a short list of prerequisites.

• .NET 10 SDK: the project targets it, and any IDE with .NET support will attach a debugger.
• ffmpeg: the project maintains its own build, which has to be installed before the server runs.
• Platform coverage: every major operating system works except FreeBSD, which remains incompatible.
• Separate web client: hosting it apart from the server is what the team recommends while developing.

For people who only want to watch things, the project publishes downloads, an installation guide, a quick start guide and a container image. Translation happens on a Weblate instance, feature requests go through a dedicated hub, and there are no strings attached to any of it.

Created in 2003 by a group of like minded programmers, Kodi is a free and open source media player and entertainment hub for digital media, run since as a non-profit project by the XBMC Foundation with volunteer developers scattered around the world.

It ships as a native application for Android, Linux, BSD, macOS, iOS, tvOS and Windows, and runs on most common processor architectures. The interface and its skinning engine are built for a couch and a remote control rather than a desk, which is what makes it a fit for a home theatre PC.

Point it at your media and it does the cataloguing for you.

• Library building: scanning creates a personalised library with box covers, descriptions and fanart.
• Format coverage: plays almost all popular audio and video formats in circulation.
• Network playback: designed for streaming from anywhere in the house or from the internet over practically any protocol.
• Add-ons: the add-on system is what makes the hub extensible and customizable.
• Extras: playlists, slideshows, a weather forecast and a range of audio visualisations.

More than 500 developers have contributed and over 100 translators have carried Kodi into more than 70 languages. It is GPLv2 licensed, built with CMake, and offered as both final and development builds from the download section for whichever platform you run.

Navidrome turns a folder of music files into a streaming service you own. The project describes it as your personal Spotify, which is the point: no subscription, and no catalog that quietly loses the album you liked.

It handles very large collections at low resource usage, streams virtually any audio format, and reads the metadata you curated instead of overriding it. The library is monitored automatically, so new files and edited tags are imported without you triggering a rescan.

The details that matter for a real collection are covered.

• Compilations and box sets: various artists albums and multi-disc releases are handled properly rather than scattered.
• Multi-user: every account keeps its own play counts, playlists and favorites.
• Transcoding: done on the fly, set per user or per player, with Opus encoding supported.
• Lyrics: read from sidecar files and embedded tags in TTML, enhanced LRC, LRC, SRT and plain text.
• Client compatibility: works with the whole range of Subsonic, Madsonic and Airsonic apps.

The web interface is built on Material UI, responsive, themeable and translated into various languages. Ready-to-use binaries exist for macOS, Linux and Windows including Raspberry Pi, with Docker images alongside. Install from a release rather than the master branch, which can be unstable or broken mid-development.