Open-source alternatives to Plex

3 alternatives, ranked by a published maintenance score computed from live GitHub signals (fetched 2026-09-04). We flag unmaintained projects on both sides — including Plex itself when the data says so.

About Plex: Proprietary core; 2025 price increases and remote-playback paywalling pushed many users to look around. It is closed-source, so the same public maintenance signals do not exist for it — we score only the alternatives below.

The alternatives

Jellyfin

90 /100 actively maintained

Fully open media server, no accounts or paywalled features; forked from Emby.

56,526 stars · last commit 2026-09-03 · latest release v12.0-rc7 (2026-08-31) · 604 open issues/PRs · GPL-2.0 · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 90/100 was computed

Last commit	yesterday	40/40
Latest release	4 days ago	25/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		90/100

Kodi

90 /100 actively maintained

The long-running media center application.

21,176 stars · last commit 2026-09-04 · latest release 22.0b2-Piers (2026-09-02) · 445 open issues/PRs · custom license · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 90/100 was computed

Last commit	today	40/40
Latest release	2 days ago	25/25
Community size	GitHub stars	15/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		90/100

Streama

74 /100 maintained

Self-hosted Netflix-style streaming server.

9,823 stars · last commit 2026-08-09 · latest release v1.11.1 (2026-01-04) · 352 open issues/PRs · MIT · fetched 2026-09-04

How this 74/100 was computed

Last commit	26 days ago	40/40
Latest release	8 months ago	12/25
Community size	GitHub stars	12/15
Open-issue trend	not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile	10/20
Total		74/100