Notes 
Jellyfin is a fully free media server forked from Emby. It streams your own video, music, and photo libraries to any device via web, mobile, and TV apps, with no subscription, no account, and no data sent to external servers. Everything runs on hardware you control, and the project accepts no premium tiers or hidden telemetry.
Reviewed by Marcus Holmberg
Jellyfin
jellyfin.org 4.7 (11)
Rate Jellyfin: No account needed
Threat level
Hardened
A hardened pick. Worth the effort once you have chosen to shrink your footprint on purpose. Enough for most people. Threat levels
Our take
Jellyfin is the cleanest privacy-respecting alternative to Plex: no vendor account, no cloud dependency, nothing phoning home. The trade-off is setup effort: you are running a server, managing libraries, and troubleshooting transcoding yourself, which Plex historically smoothed over. Hardware requirements for live transcoding can also be significant depending on your library. For anyone willing to invest a few hours in initial setup, Jellyfin gives you full ownership of your media server with no ongoing obligations to a third party.
GitHub at a glance
jellyfin/jellyfin GPL-2.0 csharpdotnethacktoberfestjellyfin
Stars
58,983
+264 this week
Forks
5,760
376 watching
Last commit
today
healthy
Latest release
v12.4
8d ago, 100+ total
Star history
Issues
95% closed
476
open
8,611
closed
+128 / -87
opened / closed, last 4 weeks
Opened vs closed, last 12 weeks
Commits, last 26 weeks
1,343 commits, active 26 of 26 weeks
370 contributors since Dec 2018
Languages
- C# 99.1%
- HTML 0.9%
- Shell 0%
Updated daily from the GitHub API. Star tracking since Jun 22, 2026.
Website at a glance
jellyfin.org
D score 30
Weak website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested 3d ago
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
Jellyfin alternatives
Jellyfin license, in plain English
GPL-2.0 Strong copyleft
Free to use and modify, but anything you distribute that is built on it must also be open under the same license.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Same license
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: Strong copyleft keeps every distributed version open. A vendor cannot fold this into a closed product and ship it without releasing their changes.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.