Alternatives to Emby for all platforms with any license

Kodi

Kodi, formerly XBMC, is a free and open source media player and entertainment center for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, XBox, and iOS. Kodi is designed to be the perfect...
- Isn't a media server, it's a media player. Guest • Feb 2017 • 40 agrees and 13 disagrees
- Not a media server, it aggregates and plays. It is more akin to a player, like vlc, etc. than Emby. Guest • Apr 2017 • 31 agrees and 10 disagrees
- No backend, only a frontend. Therefore NOT a media server. Guest • Apr 2017 • 30 agrees and 9 disagrees
- If you have a NAS (or server PC) with DBMaria + PHPMyAdmin you can share a same Data Base trough all your device (PC, Laptop, Android TV, Raspberry Pi, Smartphone,...) GolgothBe • Feb 2018 • 1 agrees and 0 disagrees
- Just wasted an hour installing this. It is not a media server. Guest • Apr 2019
- Kodi is not a media server. It is a media player. Guest • Jan 2019 • 0 agrees and 1 disagrees
- Not a media server, it aggregates and plays. It is more akin to a player, like vlc, etc. than Emby. Guest • Apr 2018 • 1 agrees and 3 disagrees
- Kodi is more of a player than a server, like emby Guest • Jul 2017 • 2 agrees and 4 disagrees
- Kodi is not a media player, it is a media server.. Guest • Mar 2017 • 2 agrees and 13 disagrees
Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux Android iPhone ... Android Tablet BSD iPad Raspberry Pi Fire TV
Media Streaming Support AirPlay TV Shows meta data support Video library ... Automatic subtitles download Built-in Media converter Built-in subtitle search DNLA Server Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Support for IPTV Jailbreak required Music Library Support for subtitles TV Shows Add a feature

1229 Like
Plex

Plex bridges the gap between your computer and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media. Plex can...
- Emby is (used to be) "free"; any software that (1) has to use the term "freemium" and (2) is proprietary and (3) requires an online login is not equivalent enough. Guest • Jul 2018 • 9 agrees and 8 disagrees
Freemium $ $ $ Mac Windows Linux Android iPhone ... Chrome OS Windows S Android Tablet Windows Phone iPad Apple TV Daydream Kindle Fire Roku
Play local content Media sharing Media Transcoding Media Streaming ... Dedicated Server Hosting DNLA Server Local server Media Streaming Offline sync of media files Remote File Access Remote Media Access Stream audio Add a feature

725 Like
Jellyfin

Jellyfin is a personal media server. The Jellyfin project was started as a result of Emby's decision to take their code closed-source, as well as various...
- exactly like emby... Just Free. all features enabled and works great on omv Guest • Feb 2019
- It is an open source fork of Emby. Guest • Mar 2019
- While not quite up to Emby, as Emby has been developed much further that Jellyfin, it is as close as I've found (is forked from Emby before Emby changed to closed source Guest • Apr 2019
Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux Self-Hosted
Local server Media Transcoding Media Streaming Add a feature

12 Like
Ampache

Ampache is a web based audio streaming application and file manager allowing you to access your music from anywhere, using almost any internet enabled device. Common...

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux Android iPhone ... Self-Hosted PHP
Based on Laravel Support for MPD Self-hosted music Web-Based ... Support for WebDAV Add a feature

43 Like
Splash

The smoothest Video Player you have ever seen. (Now it's 100% free without ads).

Free Windows
Support for CUDA acceleration Motion smoothing Support for Intel Quick Sync acceleration Add a feature

64 Like
Infuse

Ignite your video content with Infuse – the beautiful way to watch almost any video format on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. No need to convert files! Infuse is...

Freemium $ $ $ iPhone iPad Apple TV
Support for DLNA Metadata Search TV Shows meta data support Add a feature

32 Like
LeonFlix

A multi-platform desktop app for watching movies and TV shows.Leonflix is a search tool for movies and TV shows. It scrapes video/file hosting websites and has the...

Free Mac Windows Linux
Spotlight Track movies TV Shows Add a feature

14 Like
MediaPortal

MediaPortal transforms your PC into a complete media solution. It runs on basic hardware, connects directly to your TV and displays your TV Series, Movies, Photos and...

Free Open Source Windows
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Internet Radio Skinnable Add a feature

46 Like
JRiver Media Center

JRiver Media Center is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows. Media Center is a...

Commercial Mac Windows
Configurable Music Library Add a feature

34 Like
Playon

PlayOn is both browser and media server for your Windows PC which lets you magically stream your favorite shows, movies, even your personal media from your PC to your...

Commercial Windows Android iPhone Blackberry Android Tablet ... iPad Blackberry 10
Support for DLNA Add a feature

14 Like
Kantaris

Kantaris is an all new media player based on code from Videolan client (VLC Media Player) and Bass audio library.
- Discontinued Last Update: 2013-04-25. See https://sourceforge.net/projects/kantaris/
- Warning Sourceforge has detected malware in Kantaris builds.
Free Open Source Windows
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Support for subtitles Add a feature

15 Like
OpenPHT

OpenPHT is a community driven fork of Plex Home Theater (abandoned). That's a open-source client for Plex. Need to install Plex Media Server.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux
Media Streaming Add a feature

5 Like
Semper Media Center

Semper Media Center (SPMC in short) is a Android-minded fork of Kodi, by the former Kodi android maintainer, Koying.

Free Open Source Android
No features added Add a feature

8 Like
Moovida

Moovida is transforming the way consumers experience digital entertainment media. In a world where the promise of on-demand media has yet to be realized, Moovida...
- Discontinued The official website is no longer available. Last version, 2.1.1, released in October 2011, can be still downloaded from Wayback Machine.
Free Open Source Windows
No features added Add a feature

22 Like
VidOn Server

Smartly manage all your multimedia resources and automatically transcode videos for your Phone, Pad, etc.

Free Windows
TV Shows Add a feature

6 Like

Emby Comments

Not free

Comment by wolfcry0

about Emby · Sep 2015 · Helpful Not helpful 9 Helpful Report as spam

Requires subscription for full functionality, mobile apps require purchase as well unless you subscribe.

chadyred · Jun 2016

I see this, so boring...

In balance, Emby is a pretty cool app and I've bee...

Comment by jeremydavis

about Emby · Dec 2018 · Helpful Not helpful 4 Helpful Report as spam

On balance, Emby is a pretty cool app and I've been using it for years on my Linux mediaserver. It has been a bit buggy at times, but overall a great product.

Unfortunately though it appears that they are now moving to a proprietary license for the core product (albeit with support for open source plugins).

If you don't care about such things, then Emby is probably a good choice for you and a reasonable alternative to software such as Plex.

However, I personally do care about open source. As such I can no longer recommend Emby and will instead be moving to Jellyfin.

I can't in fairness provide a star rating. The software itself probably deserves a "4/5", but the move to proprietary license, get's a "1/5" from me...

[Edited by jeremydavis, December 19]

Emby

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Alternatives to Emby for all platforms with any license

Kodi

Plex

Jellyfin

Ampache

Splash

Infuse

LeonFlix

MediaPortal

JRiver Media Center

Playon

Kantaris

OpenPHT

Semper Media Center

Moovida

VidOn Server

Platforms

Desktop

Mobile

License

Emby Comments

Not free

In balance, Emby is a pretty cool app and I've bee...