Home › Media servers › Jellyfin

Jellyfin

Free media server, no strings attached

verified 2026-07-02GPL-2.0self-hostable
Arete score
4.8 / 5
Autonomy5
Return5
Efficiency4
Transparency5
ἀρετή “AH-reh-tay” — excellence: a thing being good at what it’s for. Mean of the four principle scores. How we score →
Visit site ↗ Self-host with ValueIndex — join waitlist

Plain outbound link — no affiliate parameters, no tracking redirects.

✓ Verified by a human against the public rubric on 2026-07-02 · see the evidence ↓

Why it's listed

Written by the ValueIndex editor, from the verification pass of 2026-07-02.

Jellyfin is the media server with nothing to sell you: no premium tier, no phone-home, no features migrating behind a paywall — the fork exists precisely because Emby did those things. It streams your library to every platform with hardware transcoding. We verified there is no paid tier and no telemetry by default.

Facts

License
GPL-2.0
Pricing
Free
Funding model
Community OSS
Self-hostable
Yes — deploy difficulty: easy
Replaces
Plex, Netflix (your own media)
Verification
Verified against the rubric on 2026-07-02

Evidence notes

No phone-home vs Plex; official docker; no paywalled features

Recorded during the rubric pass — every score must carry evidence a stranger could re-check.

Also in media servers

Spotted a problem — trackers added, dark patterns, abandonment? Report a violation. Scores change when evidence does.