Plex Changes 2025: Lifetime Pass Price Rise, No More Free Remote Play (TLDR Buy The Lifetime Pass Now)

Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 06:11

https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/

Plex Pass Price Increase
New USD prices as of April 29, 2025 will be:
 Monthly: $6.99
 Yearly: $69.99
 Lifetime: $249.99
*Exact pricing in other currencies may vary.

Current USD prices to give you an idea how large of a price increase this is.
 Monthly: $4.99
 Yearly: $39.99
 Lifetime: $119.99

Upcoming Change to Remote Playback for Personal Media
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.

Beginning on April 29, 2025, users will be able to stream from personal media libraries on a remote network in one of two ways:

Option 1: Remote playback with a Plex Pass
Upgrading to any Plex Pass subscription is a great option for server owners, as it ensures all users accessing the Plex Media Server can stream remotely, without an additional charge. Even if you don’t run your own Plex Media Server, a Plex Pass subscription will not only allow you to stream remotely from any server to which you have access, but also lets you make use of other Plex Pass functionality like Skip Intro and Skip Credits.

Option 2: Remote playback with a Remote Watch Pass subscription (New!)
Our brand-new subscription offering, Remote Watch Pass, allows individual users to remotely stream media from any personal media server to which they have access. This is a great option for users who don’t run their own server and are looking to stream from a server belonging to a friend or family member who does not have a Plex Pass. It’s also a good alternative for server owners who may not need the full feature offering of a Plex Pass, but are looking for a more cost-effective option to access their media remotely. Beginning April 29, 2025, Remote Watch Pass will be available for an introductory price of $1.99/month or $19.99/year.

Entertainment Plex Subscription

Related Stores

Plex
Plex

Comments

  • holdenmg on 20/03/2025 - 06:30
    +1

    Have a look at the AUD/USD rate.
    (Sad).
    We pay so much (already).

  • shadyscab on 20/03/2025 - 07:03
    +2

    Existing lifetime subscriber here, transitioning back to Jellyfin and tailscale.

    I think I paid $100 aud, which I don’t think was great value, I liked the idea of Plexamp and hassle free remote access.

    @ $393 aud you’d have to be out of your mind unless you’re running some kind of pirate Netflix.

    https://jellyfin.org/
    https://tailscale.com/

    • Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 07:20
      +9

      Quite strange you would want to switch when you have the pass.

      Ive tried Jellyfin (still have it setup as a spare on my unraid server) and found zero reasons to use it over plex and it was always a pain in the ass to setup compared to plex and apps for it always sucked and look dated.
      Great if you truely do not want to spend any money but even with the price increase i'd still go for plex personally.

      "running some kind of pirate Netflix." With 3500 movies and 33000 TV episodes i guess i am but arnt most people doing this to replace netflix? haha

      • Ozjonno on 27/03/2025 - 09:18

        I agree with you. I gave Jellyfin a go a while ago after seeing everyone online saying its better than Plex. After much frustration mucking around to get it to work (at home on an android, then an Iphone, then the Nvidia shield, then getting it to work outside the network), i gave up and went to back to Plex. Lucky i have Plex lifetime i bought many years ago at around ~$100AUD

        The price for a lifetime pass is a lot however, so i can understand any hesitancy getting it at the moment.

  • FoxJump on 20/03/2025 - 07:23

    i don't understand why people don't just pretranscode everything with say tdarr. keep a 4k version and a fhd version. use vlc and tailscale or dlna

    you know the extra pixels do nothing once you sit on your couch 5m away from the tv in your media room

    All
    free

    • Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 07:41

      https://i.ibb.co/CKjM1dgT/Screenshot-2025-03-20-072848.png

      That is why.
      It's not about saving money as much it's about a better all in one streaming service
      It has apps on just about everything and it's simple and it's as easy to use by just signing in just like netflix.

      If it's just you and you want as little to $0 cost just use jellyfin, but with multiple barely tech literate users id hate to use anything but Plex.

      • SBOB on 20/03/2025 - 07:48
        +3

        Not sure I could live with the shame of sharing to the world that I recently added "Dickie Roberts-Former Child Star" to my movie collection.
        :)

        • Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 07:54
          +1

          Unwatched lol just another to add to the other 2300 unwatched movies.

          • moar bargains on 20/03/2025 - 12:51

            @Axelstrife: Jeepers. You've got more than 6 years of unwatched movies there my man assuming one a day. And like 18 years of TV episodes if you watched 5 a day 🤯 Mind you, I probably have a similar amount of time covered between Ebooks/Audiobooks and games from Epic etc on my backlog…

            • Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 13:23

              @moar bargains: 9 months worth of movies and 2 years 9 months worth of Tv shows, I have an app that shows me the exact amount haha but them numbers dont account for what ive watched only total.

      • FoxJump on 20/03/2025 - 07:49
        +1

        i see
        ill be sure to teach my kids the ways of tech

      • CaptainJack on 20/03/2025 - 10:12
        +2

        Really? My partner is as tech-illiterate as they come, and even she can click one button in the menu to open up jellyfin.

        I always choose FOSS where I can, paid options seems like you can almost guarantee that they are going to (profanity) around with the functionality or jack up the costs too much at some point.

        • Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 15:02

          How did she go setting up Tailscale though? i assumed you did NOT help with that since remote users wont have you there do everything.

          I realize you would'nt of used tailscale as you would live together but for remote use it's needed and not as simple as opening up jellyfin and logging in as is done for plex.

    • Bruceflix on 20/03/2025 - 09:45
      +1

      Electricity isn't free. Cheaper to download versions encoded to your requirements over transcoding yourself

    • ScruffTheJanitor on 20/03/2025 - 10:37

      I think anyone that knows about the above and would be someone that considers doing it probably already has a giant library. If you've got 10, 20, 30, 40 , 50 TB of movies and TV shows, what's the time it would to take to do that? + The electricity cost that goes along with that + then either buying more storage to hold 4K AND HD versions, or deleting some stuff you already have.

      Either way the time, effort and cost seems to be far, far, far, far greater than spending $160 on a life time Plex Pass sub.

      • FoxJump on 20/03/2025 - 11:58
        -1

        6TB down to 2TB took 1x laptop about a week. Probably 80w/hr so lets say

        80 x 24 x 7 / 1000 x 30c == $4 for 6TB
        ok so you have 60TB
        that's $40

        $40AUD < $160 USD and now you have 80TB

        • ScruffTheJanitor on 21/03/2025 - 15:39

          And you just stop there and never download anything ever again? No future costs and time of doing this with everything you download.

          And 6TB took took 1 week? So that means 10 weeks of running your laptop just converting? How about the cost of your new laptop when you work that one to death leaving it on for that long lol.

          It's also $160AUD right now, not USD.

          $160 AUD < Leaving your PC/Laptop running for 10 weeks and having to convert everything you download + praying you never get data loss because you're gonna have to do it all over again.

    • matt1234 on 20/03/2025 - 16:41

      Sigh. I barely even know where to start with this comment.

      I guess i'll start with the first main point, the upcoming changes have nothing to do with transcoding - remote play is all playback that's not on the same local network.

      Onto "pretranscoding" - the amount of drive space it would require to have multiple copies of everything in a large media collection would be insane.
      Not to mention how bloody frustrating it would be to pick the version each time i want to watch something based on what equipment i'm watching it on.

      And man if you can't tell 4k from SD or HD 5m away from your tv i think it might be time to see an optometrist, or buy a new tv.

  • JimmyF on 20/03/2025 - 09:28
    +6

    Yikes…. ~$190 AUD for the lifetime now, going to ~$393 AUD!

    Just checked my email, I got this for ~$58 AUD 11 years ago….

    Also back when the Aussie dollar was decent too.

    From amount $57.34 AUD
    To amount $49.03 USD
    Exchange rate: 1 Australian Dollar = 0.855127 US Dollars

    • Bruceflix on 20/03/2025 - 09:46
      +2

      And there's me thinking the $99 i paid was a bargain.
      You the boss!

      • JimmyF on 20/03/2025 - 12:00
        +1

        $99 is still a great price!

    • Futurist on 20/03/2025 - 09:52
      +1

      Isn;t it $159.99 AUD at the moment?

      The plex pass checkout page shows the current price in AUD rates - so i assume this is the final amount.
      It wouldnt then use the US->AUD current exchange rate would it ? hmmm…

      • stuffandthat on 20/03/2025 - 10:38

        That's what I'm seeing.

      • JimmyF on 20/03/2025 - 11:57

        Isn;t it $159.99 AUD at the moment?

        Dunno, I own it, so no need for me to go through the checkout process. Just going by what the OP said, the current Lifetime price is $119.99 USD

        Google tells me 120 United States Dollars equals $189.34 Australian Dollars.

    • terlalu on 20/03/2025 - 11:59

      I looked up how much I paid for mine, turns out I paid in Brazillian Reals…. ?! must've been some OzB thing

  • JuanLove on 20/03/2025 - 10:37
    +2

    I'm currently using Stremio + torrentio + premiumize debrid

    I'm finding the kids always watch the same few movies. I wanted to make a hybrid setup where I keep some media locally on a server to reduce loading time. Anything not found locally, I want to use a debrid server and do all of this in the same program.

    Can Plex do something like this? Or is it only local files?

    • Mikael on 26/03/2025 - 11:06

      Add watchlistarr to Plex. I run my Plex on unraid. You can search movies inside Plex and add to watchlist. It downloads it to your Plex server locally. I have Usenet.

  • Ryanek on 20/03/2025 - 11:05
    +2

    The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience

    I feel you should only be charged if you use their relay servers to stream outside your network.

  • Big Mike on 20/03/2025 - 11:29

    Anyway to get Lifetime Plex for cheaper atm? (VPN or another method?)

    • Futurist on 20/03/2025 - 11:46
      +1

      I'm waiting to see if they have discounts just before the April date before going through with it..

      • 63pinecone on 20/03/2025 - 18:27
        +1

        I would be very surprised if they did a discount now after announcing a price hike

    • denserham on 20/03/2025 - 22:26

      Turkey is $130 aud with exchange rate, save $30.

      • 63pinecone on 22/03/2025 - 10:42

        Doesn't let you use a foreign card on the website though

        • denserham on 22/03/2025 - 10:47

          Bummer have you tried wise or revolut? I need to fly to turkey and open a bank account one day

  • newlaca on 20/03/2025 - 16:21
    +1

    So as the admin, I have three different households connecting to my server. If i purchase the yearly remote pass for $19.99, the three households who connect to my server won't have to buy a pass?

  • Axelstrife on 20/03/2025 - 17:19

    Yes, if the server owner(you) has plex pass remote stream is free for all users.

    With this price rise I'd recommend lifetime over monthly or yearly.

  • hithere2341 on 21/03/2025 - 01:32
    +9

    Just paid ~$59 by VPNing into Argentina and paying in ARS. Spent a fair bit of time to get it to work.
    DM me if you would like instructions. I'd rather not share the method publicly. It requires knowledge around Dev Tools to bypass the Argentinian card restriction.

    • Zuelly on 21/03/2025 - 10:01

      Dev Tools to bypass the Argentinian card restriction.

      Does this work on other sites too… never thought to try brute it like so…

    • Cronium on 22/03/2025 - 17:54

      Dev Tools to bypass the Argentinian card restriction

      Client side validation - oh my.

  • Matteo27 on 21/03/2025 - 09:19

    Is Plex Pass worth getting if streaming on the same network to one device?

    • 63pinecone on 21/03/2025 - 09:26

      Probably not

    • Axelstrife on 21/03/2025 - 09:27
      +1

      If you watch alot of TV Shows then intro skip is useful, but tbh maybe take a look at jellyfin if its only local network.

      • Matteo27 on 21/03/2025 - 10:02

        Thanks I was wondering if the hardware transcoding would be worth it but the auto conversion works really well for me on the free version

        • Axelstrife on 21/03/2025 - 18:10

          Honestly, you're better off buying a firestick, Apple TV or Nvidia Shield and never deal with transcoding. it will save some electricity too since it will direct play.

  • Aust on 21/03/2025 - 22:17

    So i can no longer watch my personal media on my pc via plex on my sony tv unless i pay for it?

    • Axelstrife on 22/03/2025 - 00:30

      That depends if your TV is on another internet connection or not.

      Local network hasn't changed only remote connections.

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join