Premiere device limit exceeded.

[dmnmn 0]

If I understand correctly, Emby imposes a limit of 30 devices. You can purchase a second premiere key and run a second server with another key to get 30 additional devices on the same machine with the same libraries, but you can't stack keys on the same account.

What is the technical justification for such a limit, apart from charging extra for additional devices on a monthly basis?

Edited January 14, 2025 by dmnmn

[Jdiesel 1431]

There once was the option for a one-time payment of $99usd to extent the number of devices from 25 to 45 devices but it was removed in April 2024 in favour of the monthly subscription of $11.99/month for 45 devices.

While you could run a second instance of Emby with a second license on the same hardware, you will likely need a second gpu for HWA for things to play nice. Same goes for maintaining two separate databases. Not ideal but still better than paying a monthly subscription. I understand why Emby is trying to push people towards a continuous revenue stream over lump payments but to me the monthly payment model lends itself better to services rather then static software. I would rather pay a lump sum for each major version over a reoccurring monthly payment. If I stop making monthly payments the software loses functionality it once had, with a perpetual license you never lose what you had but may be locked out of new features/updates.

 

[ebr 16168]

9 hours ago, dmnmn said:

What is the technical justification for such a limit,

The limit was created as a means to slow down the illegal use of our platform because that puts us at risk.

[Jdiesel 1431]

11 minutes ago, ebr said:

The limit was created as a means to slow down the illegal use of our platform because that puts us at risk.

I understand the reasoning but in reality it can have the opposite effect. $20/month is peanuts to someone selling access to 30 people for $10/month. The person who is providing access to their immediate family is the one who feels the crunch. Between electricity, internet, and storage cost I am already taking a hit offering this to my family. Having to pay a reoccurring monthly fee makes it tempting to start recovering costs from my users.

 

Does Emby not have a way of revoking licenses from people who are going against the terms of service? Seems like blacklisting licenses would be a more effective way to curb illegal use of Emby rather than putting up a paywall on legitimate power users.

[ebr 16168]

Also keep in mind that our price hasn't changed since 2018 and, instead of raising the price on the vast majority of our users, we do use these to help with the fact that ALL our costs are significantly more than they were in 2018.

[dmnmn 0]

Thank you for your response.

However, it's misleading to say that the limitation is implemented to protect against piracy, when, on one hand, you offer a subscription-based license to increase the number of devices,, and on the other hand, you allow customers to purchase multiple licenses that can be installed on the same physical server.

Additionally, the 30-device limit in 2025 is quite restrictive in some cases. For instance, I have 8 siblings, each with at least a phone, a tablet, and a desktop computer, and the same applies to their partners.

Wouldn't it be more reasonable to increase the subscription or license prices, considering your costs have risen, to provide the real reasons for these increases, and to offer a one-time fee option for increasing the device limit?

Thank you.

[xxDeadbolt 2]

A subscription option which could be slightly more expensive than a standard subscription where you can either choose an exact number of users, or pay for additional users and cap it at, for a hypothetical example, 3 or 5 devices per user. This would be better, imo, than a set total number of devices and the ambiguity of the wording of Premiere description on it.
 

so when I set up my server and start adding users, there is a cap depending on my subscription. If I want to go over then I need to pay per each additional person.   @ebr

[Tomy159 1]

ya that I talk few days back, even 30 devices in 2025 is really limited, when is bigger family like I has.

pay monthly is sane when you not selling but use for family only. all this is only for make more money nothing else.

emby is really good and must say is fast then Plex but this limitation is killing it.

also what firestick again its still count to devices or not. yes there is 2 version emby for fire tv and emby for android it is both count it or just one of them?

seriously if will 50+ devices on lifetime for of course good price will much better. who selling it then will need like now more then 80 devices anyway that you can keep on monthly if they wish. 

that will make more sense 

[scott46953 30]

I just counted 25 connections just within the last month, why am I paying a reoccurring fee of $11.99 to add more connections, when I have not went over my limit, this has been an ongoing thing since I originally went over my connection limit, I'm on Emby unlimited premiere... So, do I get a refund for every time I was charged 1199 for each time that I was not over my limit? Why doesn't it just charge when I go over my limit automatically why is it charging monthly? Just because I went over the limit one time on unlimited emby premiere I'm entitled to pay $11.99 every month afterwards? If I'm not over my limit I don't want to be charged, I'm not trying to spend money for connections that I do not need. Also, I still need a way to count my connections without having to go through my log and spend an hour looking at everything. This is very unfair, and for somebody like me that's been with emby for a very long time, I think that this issue is been going on long enough and needs to be fixed. I should be able to go to my connection screen we're all this stuff is being used and there should be a number at the top of everything that's counted, and east of ice should have an easy marker on exactly how many connections that each device or account is using. 

I shouldn't have to look at my log file and determine that one particular person is using 50 connections within a week time. 

That is stealing in my eyes from the person that is doing it, but I can't control people in my family from giving out my stuff, but I can disable their account when I catch them. 

But I shouldn't take me an hour of my life to figure out a situation. But on a normal month when I'm not over my limit, I shouldn't have to spend an hour of my life for no reason and find out that I'm not over my limit and getting charged 1199. So I want to request this to be fixed, I understand you don't want to fix it because it pushes in your guys's favor of profit, and I do appreciate everything that the E and e m b y company has provided to me already, however this has been an ongoing topic, and it appears at least on my server, that it has not been fixed or done anything with. 

And I definitely don't want new customers or members that are running new servers to run into this and get upset and stop using emby, I want to be able to promote it and see the emby company grow faster without having new customers or members with new servers to be upset over payments issues and not being able to control their connections and count them properly. So I'm going to ask please, please fix this. You will notice that you will become more profitable, It will profit you more in the long run, I will promise you that.

But I still love you guys  

Always will, do you think that maybe, I can start streaming my live streams in h265 hevc?? Also the conversions tab for screen needs a easier way to remove 800 converter tasks.. I spent now 3 days hitting that delete button on converter tasks.. I really don't want to go into my files and have to delete stuff to be able to remove them all. They're no longer needed, my commercial skip program has a convert option, and the h265 turns out to be much better picture quality versus file size compared to when I use emby to do the same task. Also emby does not let me control resolution versus bit rate. However streaming live using h265 main high level 120+ is on top of my list.

[Neminem 1515]

23 hours ago, scott46953 said:

I'm on Emby unlimited premiere...

There is no such thing.

23 hours ago, scott46953 said:

getting charged 1199

You signed up for an subscription.

Emby Premiere - Emby

Emby Premiere Terms of Service - Emby

Edited February 24, 2025 by Neminem

[Neminem 1515]

23 hours ago, scott46953 said:

Also the conversions tab for screen needs a easier way to remove 800 converter tasks.. I spent now 3 days hitting that delete button on converter tasks..

Why not use something like

Tdarr Tdarr

Fileflow FileFlows

Unmanic Optimise your file library Unmanic | Unmanic

Those can be automated.

Edited February 24, 2025 by Neminem

[Strictlyemby 0]

I’m callin bs on “they drop off after a week” I’ve only got a few devices used regularly. Tried to use Emby on a new tv I got today and it’s telling me limit exceeded. No option to purchase device unlock which I would happily do if it were an option. Only option is to restore unlock. I click on that and it tells me it’s not purchased but no way to purchase it. Could be operator error or some glitch. But I’m definitely under the device limit. Or at least I should be unless they’re not dropping off..

[scott46953 30]

For a server that can't handle a load like it used to be able to and doesn't use CPU, I don't know if paying for anything more than the smallest package is worth it.

Administrators get counted on every device including their own server as a connection. I can remember being counted 10 times just for doing simple tasks editing settings and checking to make sure things work properly. Work home and all the devices in between. 

Now I just use Google remote, so I'm not being counted a bunch of times.

I guess it's the same person gets counted three or four times that won't take very long to do 10 people times 3 is 30. How do I block everybody from using web browsers and block everybody from using the new emby app? I also want to turn off Roku devices and anything that can't direct play without DVR. 

How do I do that? That'll lower a lot of connection count problems. Limit every person to one particular sign-in type per device.

Oh and you missed the email for your monthly connection limit, none of the normal main things that you type in that email search brings up the emails. 

Emby premier both of those words should bring it up and it fails to retrieve the email. So then the server owner is left too sort through tons of emails to look for an email that don't know what the topic is. More time wasted just have to go to the server and click on premiere and click on the little link and hope and pray you get the right email when you got four or five emails. I miss the old paper cabinet days, just open the cabinet go to the folder pull the paper out and all the information right there.

Edited February 4 by scott46953

[ebr 16168]

11 hours ago, Strictlyemby said:

I’m callin bs on “they drop off after a week” I’ve only got a few devices used regularly. Tried to use Emby on a new tv I got today and it’s telling me limit exceeded. No option to purchase device unlock which I would happily do if it were an option. Only option is to restore unlock. I click on that and it tells me it’s not purchased but no way to purchase it. Could be operator error or some glitch. But I’m definitely under the device limit. Or at least I should be unless they’re not dropping off..

Hi.  Are you running your own server or connecting to someone else's?

[ebr 16168]

10 hours ago, scott46953 said:

I can remember being counted 10 times just for doing simple tasks editing settings and checking to make sure things work properly.

Hi.  Exactly how did you determine that?

[Q-Droid 989]

21 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Exactly how did you determine that?

Does a device MAC address figure into the calculation or is a different fingerprint used to count them?

 

 

[scott46953 30]

2 minutes ago, Q-Droid said:

Does a device MAC address figure into the calculation or is a different fingerprint used to count them?

 

 

I check my own server in the morning when I wakeup from my phone in bedroom. Half asleep I may do it from web browser, then at work from old Android box. Then a few hours later from work computer, then on services calls at work, phone app, then when I get home, laptop in kitchen, then kitchen TV, then computer in living room, then living room TV, then later bedroom TV and the laptop in bedroom. All by me

[ebr 16168]

13 minutes ago, scott46953 said:

I check my own server in the morning when I wakeup from my phone in bedroom. Half asleep I may do it from web browser, then at work from old Android box. Then a few hours later from work computer, then on services calls at work, phone app, then when I get home, laptop in kitchen, then kitchen TV, then computer in living room, then living room TV, then later bedroom TV and the laptop in bedroom. All by me

Right, but why do you think that counted as 10 Premiere devices? I can tell you it almost certainly did not.

[scott46953 30]

I watch my server all day long, how many connections do I get for my old lifetime account? Because it runs out and then you shut me off without any notifications except an email, then 2 or 3 weeks later when I notice it someone complains because they don't want to pay the message on their screen.  How many people paid in that time?? Idk I have no logs of that.. then I have 1 or 2 weeks left of the month. Full payment? Yes. Does it go a full month after that? Imthe confusion sets in because of the way we see the devices on our screens.  The emby company must have tools to see what we do not. So we are stuck in the dark looking at a device screen that means no since.

[ebr 16168]

3 hours ago, scott46953 said:

then you shut me off without any notifications except an email

What email?  We don't send an email on an over limit condition.

How many users have you shared your server with?  Your use of the browser is not contributing to your Premiere device count.

[justinrh 259]

8 hours ago, scott46953 said:

I check my own server in the morning when I wakeup from my phone in bedroom. Half asleep I may do it from web browser, then at work from old Android box. Then a few hours later from work computer, then on services calls at work, phone app, then when I get home, laptop in kitchen, then kitchen TV, then computer in living room, then living room TV, then later bedroom TV and the laptop in bedroom. All by me

Now this guy loves his Emby!

[scott46953 30]

The older app works better, it actually direct streams, the newer app has the option in the settings but it does not work. However you mean to tell me between the new app and the old app with somebody signs and using both of them they don't get counted twice using the same device? Would somebody uses the same device and logs in with the Google Chrome browser and then turns around and uses Safari that they don't get counted four times? How does it keep track of the devices between the apps that the person uses on the device?

[ebr 16168]

2 minutes ago, scott46953 said:

How does it keep track of the devices between the apps that the person uses on the device?

We use the device ID provided by the device itself so this should be the same on the same device.

[scott46953 30]

On 2/4/2026 at 6:58 PM, justinrh said:

Now this guy loves his Emby!

And yes I do love my emby I just want to be treated Fair, I feel like if I come to the forums with a problem, it's more of a hassle than fixing it myself. I'm a programmer, I can read logs just fine. After work at 12 hour shifts I really don't have the time to do it. But I do want my TV to play without stopping all the time or to be unfairly counted with all my devices. It should only count me more than once if I logged in and watching more than one thing at a time. Not just look at my server and checking the stat screen. When I log in using some alias, it wants me to pay a premiere on the device. Is that every account that's made it does the exact same thing so that means it's charging everybody that gets that message. When only thing that's needed is to notify the server owner better. We don't get nothing in red across our server screen saying that our premier services limited reached. We got to click on the premier option and look at the little premier info. Like I said, if I use my search box on my email to try to go back to find any missed emails, impossible task. Then I left to try to figure out which of the four emails that I currently use is used for the premiere... It's a headache.

[scott46953 30]

I forgot the lock my card back this morning after I got breakfast, I'm a maxed out lifetime member premiere. I add on connections when I need it, but I'm not out of connections. Why is it charging me when I don't need it?