Plex users, it’s time for a change. The popular media server platform has announced its first subscription price increase in a decade, impacting both monthly and lifetime Plex Pass options. This news, hitting streamers this week, marks a significant shift for the company that has long been a go-to solution for managing and accessing personal media libraries.
For those unfamiliar, Plex allows users to organize their movies, TV shows, music, and photos on a central server and stream them to various devices. The Plex Pass subscription unlocks premium features like hardware transcoding, offline downloads for mobile devices, intro skipping, and more.
The price adjustments vary depending on the subscription tier. The monthly Plex Pass is increasing from $4.99 to $6.99, while the annual plan will jump from $39.99 to $59.99. The lifetime Plex Pass, a one-time purchase option, is seeing the most substantial increase, moving from $119.99 to $149.99. These new prices are effective immediately for new subscribers, while existing monthly and annual subscribers will see the increase reflected in their next billing cycle. Lifetime subscribers who purchased their pass before today will not be affected by this change.
Plex has stated that this price adjustment is necessary to support the platform’s ongoing development and expansion of features. In a blog post, they highlighted the continuous improvements and new functionalities added over the past ten years without a price increase.
In addition to the price hike, Plex is also implementing changes to its remote streaming access. While the core functionality remains, users on free plans will now be limited to streaming from their own server to devices within the same household. To stream outside the home network, a Plex Pass subscription will now be required. This change aims to further incentivize Plex Pass subscriptions.
This price increase, while the first in a long time, will likely be met with mixed reactions from the Plex community. While some users may understand the need for price adjustments to support ongoing development, others may be disappointed by the added cost. It remains to be seen how these changes will impact Plex’s user base in the long run.
