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Reviewed by Marcus Holmberg
Jellyfin logo

Jellyfin

jellyfin.org
3 ratings so far*
GitHub ★ 54k
Website →
Media Servers Open SourceNo accountSelf-hostedWindowsmacOSLinuxAndroidiOSWebFree
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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.

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

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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
Stars
54,286
+ 726 this week
Last commit
13d ago
healthy
License
GPL-2.0
Latest release
v10.11.11
1mo ago
Stars, last 35d
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
Mozilla Observatory web-check urlscan.io SSL Labs Security Headers

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

Navidrome Open-source, self-hosted music server compatible with the Subsonic API, giving any Subsonic client access to your personal library.
Kavita Open-source, self-hosted reading server for manga, comics, and ebooks, with a built-in browser reader.
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.

* Average ratings will show on this page once the threshold of 5 ratings is reached.