Starting on April 29, 2025, Plex says that Plex Pass prices will increase as follows:
Monthly: $6.99 (up from $5.99)
Yearly: $69.99 (up from $49.99)
Lifetime: $249.99 (up from $119.99)
Also of note:
Along with increasing prices, Plex is no longer going to offer remote playback for personal media as a free service. Plex users who want to be able to stream content that’s not on the same local network as the server will have two options.
Plex is introducing a new Remote Watch Pass subscription option aimed at those who want to stream media without hosting a server. It allows individual users to remotely stream media from any personal media server they have access to, even if the owner of that server does not have a Plex Pass.
The Remote Watch Pass is priced at $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year, and it will be available starting on April 29.
Lifetime pricing is certainly jacked up quite a bit & new paywall will limit adoption.
One can only hope they’ve looked at the market and customer propensity to pay, and these changes are smart choices allowing them to continue good development.
I have a lifetime Plex Pass, however find the Plex clients on MacOS, iOS and AppleTV to be absolutely unusable for many different reasons. Thank god for Infuse.
(I tried to get on the new experience beta, however by the time I heard about it, it was full and has remained full)
Is this going to affect Infuse playback as well if I use it to connect to my remote Plex server with a free account?
I’m not sure if this counts as “remote playback” for personal media since I’m not directly using Plex for playback per se but now I’m wondering if I should get the lifetime pass before they jack the prices up.
So now with the news that plex will be requiring subscription for streaming, can i still use the infuse to stream Plex media elsewhere? So my basic question is that with plex being my infuse media, when I’m streaming, is the streaming being made with infuse or plex?
No remote streaming on free accounts is certainly a big change and is going to affect many people.
It’s not yet clear how they will be enforcing this limit so at this point it’s too early to say if free accounts will continue to work in Infuse or not.
It’s not yet clear how they will be enforcing this limit so at this point it’s too early to say if free accounts will continue to work in Infuse or not.
The relevancy is a Plex employee stating the Plex Pass authorization check will be perfomed at authentication for remote access. If Infuse functions like a native Plex client, it will likely adhere to the same restrictions outlined in the upcoming update.
I do believe they intend to require a Plex Pass for all remote streaming features, but how this is implemented can affect whether Infuse (or other 3rd party apps) are able to connect and stream content remotely.
Which Plex apps/platforms will be affected by this remote streaming change?
The changes and limitation to remote streaming of personal content will affect users of apps that offer our new Plex experience (once they’re released). In the short term, platforms running an app that has not yet received an update to our new experience will not be affected. It’s possible that future system changes may affect even users who have not updated to an app offering our new Plex experience.
Also, this employee post seems to indicate they will be launching a separate ‘new’ app and the existing app will be abandoned but continue to function as-is, at least in the short term.
BigWheel
If you are using the old app nothing will change until the eventual day comes where it just does not work with server anymore due it being too old to work with newer versions of server afaik. I do not know when that will be
Reading between the lines, this appears to indicate the remote streaming restriction will be on the app side and not the server - but they are not going to go out of their way to keep old apps working in the long-term.
With all that said, I do think it’s worth supporting products and services you enjoy using so if you prefer Plex over something like Emby or Jellyfin then I wouldn’t feel too bad about paying for a pass.
