Why is Jellyfin so much more popular than Emby?

[scb99 251]

On 31/05/2026 at 14:51, ebr said:

Hi.  That's because no one in development or testing is able to reproduce it and only a very few users have reported this happening.  So, whatever it is, is very specific to some sort of environment.

Unfortunately, we cannot fix what we cannot find - but we'll keep trying.

I can say that this happens when you try to resume a movie and it craps out for whatever reason, then it will reset itself to the beginning. (This happens to me quite often because I have one particular array which is slow to restart from hibernation and Emby often times out before it has spun up) Whether this is the same problem or not I cannot say. I never bothered to report it.

[unisoft 363]

On 31/05/2026 at 19:12, RanmaCanada said:

As EBR mentioned, some of these bugs can't be replicated, and therefore can't be solved. As for the crApple TV issues, it's a horrible device to program for to the point even Jellyfin abandoned their app for it. Network detection speed does work, but if your ISP are a$$sholes and throttle the every loving hell out of your connection, like Shaw/Rogers does here in Canada, it won't matter as all you're going to get is 3-4mbit even if you have it set to wide open.

No throttling in UK. GIG1 connection (actually around 1170mbps as over provisioned) with 107mbps on average upload using DocSIS 3.1.

Client devices using full fibre from 3 other ISP's (symmetric on those) and these have superb ping and jitter times. Not ISP crap routers either.

It has never detected WAN speed correctly in any Emby version for years. Always have to set a static value and then everything direct plays (media is compatible on all devices without transcoding).  Without setting fixed speed of say 30mbps, an 11mbps TV Show will try at transcode at 4mbps (with nothing else using the upload).

[ebr 16499]

On 6/6/2026 at 8:19 AM, unisoft said:

Without setting fixed speed of say 30mbps, an 11mbps TV Show will try at transcode at 4mbps (with nothing else using the upload).

There is now a setting that the admin can use to take care of that.

[SikSlayer 255]

On 5/24/2026 at 12:21 PM, RanmaCanada said:

Jellyfin is more popular as pirates hate to pay for stuff. Period. The fact it's open source means nothing. Jellyfin is extremely fragmented and still based on Luke's ancient code.

Remember, Jellyfin was created because someone didn't like the fact there was a nag screen to pay for an open source product. They created Emby Unlocked and went forward and forked what is now Jellyfin. 

It's an inferior product that works well enough that people are willing to put up with its issues as it costs them zero dollars, yet costs them time and frustration.

Case in point, one of those Jellyfin leeches wanted the WMC UI source for the express purpose of adding Jellyfin compatibility.

There would be a million articles about "Jellyfin's NEW WMC interface", and Jellyfin would get all the credit for it

[RanmaCanada 559]

It has also just been announced that Jellyfin had a serious RCE vulnerability in ALL their previous FFMPEG builds..

https://www.sentinelone.com/vulnerability-database/cve-2026-35033/

More proof that they don't know what they are doing..

[Deihmos 174]

I’m certain many people try Jellyfin and then realize how unpolished it is, leading them to switch to Emby instead. 

[arrbee99 1851]

Saw some article about the Plex $250 for 5 years thing. First page of comments, Jellyfin mentioned 14 times, Emby.....Zero.

[Nabukodonosor 19]

Exactly what I was saying. Generally people don't know about Emby, and most of them know about Jellyfin. That's why there is so many different plugins made by the community for Jellyfin, and not so much for Emby.

[yocker 1737]

1 hour ago, Nabukodonosor said:

Exactly what I was saying. Generally people don't know about Emby, and most of them know about Jellyfin. That's why there is so many different plugins made by the community for Jellyfin, and not so much for Emby.

As said, i'm pretty sure it's because it's free.

When people look for a media server, let's say they switch from Plex, they just google "Plex alternative".
When doing that both Emby and Jellyfin are plastered all over the results.
When they see Jellyfin is free they will quickly download that, at least to see if it is any good as they won't loose any money just trying it.

Being a free product it automatically attracts A LOT more people.
Made a little extreme for the sake of understanding, what would you choose if you had the choice between two almost identical cars, one being free and the other costing money?
 

[scb99 251]

I think the free aspect definitely reinforces a network effect on social media etc.

A serious comparison review of Jellyfin / Plex / Emby would require a lot of work which no reviewer has the time for.

I do have Jellyfin (and Plex) running and browse Jellyfin from time to time on Github though not in detail and they got a couple of decent developers pretty active on the project in the last year or two. For a long time it was just floating along but I think it got a bit of momentum going recently.

PS IF Emby disappeared tomorrow, I could use Plex but JF is nowhere near usable for me. Emby is still the best of the 3, in my case.
 

Edited July 4 by scb99

[FourCorners 10]

On 5/24/2026 at 11:26 AM, Nabukodonosor said:

Come on. Emby is practicaly free too.

Agreed.

[FourCorners 10]

On 5/24/2026 at 1:21 PM, RanmaCanada said:

Jellyfin is more popular as pirates hate to pay for stuff. Period. The fact it's open source means nothing. Jellyfin is extremely fragmented and still based on Luke's ancient code.

Remember, Jellyfin was created because someone didn't like the fact there was a nag screen to pay for an open source product. They created Emby Unlocked and went forward and forked what is now Jellyfin. 

It's an inferior product that works well enough that people are willing to put up with its issues as it costs them zero dollars, yet costs them time and frustration.

I'm not a fan of jellyfin but I do like it more than plex. For me I will use emby and pay monthly indefinitely I like it more than other platforms it just keeps getting better with better support more people on the forums so yeah, better community here. I do tinker with jellyfin css and silly stuff like take a live link from a few movies and throw it on tivimate as an m3u just crap like that. But emby is what I support and will continue to support.

[Clackdor 110]

Just saw something that I think is worth adding to this conversation. It looks like the dev behind the jellyfin desktop client is breaking off from the main dev team and will continue to develop the client under a different name no longer directly related to the main jellyfin project. From what I saw they plan on coming forward with more information as to why they came to this decision within the next day or so, but it appears to stem from internal conflicts and burnout from what I've read thus far.

I've had this opinion for a while now, but Jellyfin's biggest weakness has been their client apps. Their Xbox app went unmaintained for well over a year until fairly recently. Their entire app ecosystem is completely disjointed whether that be first party or third party. There are far too many third party developed client apps that are touted as being the best at this one thing or that other thing. This is less of an issue if you're just hosting a media server solely for yourself, or people only use the web client. When you start inviting friends and family to your server and they want to watch on something other than a browser it becomes a nightmare trying to explain that they should use an app with one name on this platform, a completely different app on that platform, and the actual jellyfin app on this other platform. They've done some interesting things server side (and there are some arguments that can be made that some things might be handled better than emby there), but none of that matters when their app ecosystem is as dysfuntional as it is.

I love free/open source software, but sometimes you get what you pay for. I run Jellyfin alongside Emby just to keep up with it. I would pick Jellyfin over Plex any day of the week despite it's issues if for some reason Emby stopped existing or went down too similar of a path as Plex. As long as Emby has an affordable lifetime license you'll never convince me that $0 is better than paying $120 one time (or a couple of times in my case as I have a couple of licenses just because I wanted to) for an overall better and more cohesive experience. IMO most people shouting that Jellyfin is better in every single way than Emby are likely basing their opinion on the price rather than the overall experience or that Jellyfin is open source as the free part is usually the appeal whether they admit it or not. Don't get me wrong, I want to actually see Jellyfin succeed, but it seems like their whole ecosystem takes just as many steps backwards as it does forwards.

Emby is just a better overall experience from both the admin and user perspective. Emby on the server-side has progressed fairly well (and not surpisingly still far ahead of Jellyfin on a number of things IMO). Just as importantly the first party app support has been fairly consistently maintained throughout the years. All of my friends/family know to just download the app called "Emby" regardless of what platform they are on. I don't have to go through the explanation as to why they need to switch to this other app or platform because whatever volunteer dev that was working on the project hasn't released an update in over a year and the app is no longer compatible with the new server version. If Emby drops support for a particular app/ecosystem there will at least be a valid argument as to why it's no longer viable from a technical or supportability standpoint. It seems that when you have a dev team that gets paid for the work they do that the project actually has the resources to keep things going fairly smoothly. Who could have ever predicted that?