For me, Plex or Jellyfin is great if I want to share my library with some friends or family, especially non-technical people. Kodi really needs tinkering and you need debrid subscriptions and requires more local maintenance. It's great for me but I wouldn't want to teach my family how to use Kodi and me having to fix it when it breaks.

Totally different software solutions aimed at different users, and many people use both.

Plex is a Server software that handles media management, libraries, users, etc etc.. and a range of player apps that have a somewhat beginner friendly layout requiring little to no setup

Personally, I run a large Plex server that provides content for my family across dozens of mixed devices in home and out of home, different users have access to different libraries and have different preferences. If needed it will automatically transcode content for remote users out of the home to fit my upload bandwidth and their available speed if they are on mobile. it keeps track of watched content and position for all users so they can move between devices seamlessly.

Kodi is an extensible media player frontend, it can play files from a remote server or NAS but there is no server management, it is just doing basic file access. there are addons for many common services and media sources but there is no user management, no transcoding, no sharing content with other clients etc etc. Having multiple kodi installs on multiple players requires each client to be configured more or less from scratch and no easy way to have multiple setups for different users with their own preferences, libraries and/or content restrictions. It is extremely powerful and configurable and has strong format support.

I have Kodi installed on one of my Nvidia Shield Pros but only use it for playback of surround music files (support for 5.1 flac on plex seems to be limited to audio within video containers for some reason) I find the interface (and all the skins I tried) extremely clunky for use as a music player, the way the remote works within the player itself is unintuitive and makes for an annoying experience restarting the track when you just want to move the playback a few seconds, a bit unfair of course as that isn't what it was made for but that's just my experience.

I prefer jellyfin myself

Plex is just more user friendly than Kodi. And the real question should be why Plex instead of Jellyfin, and my answer to that is:
I've already set up the Plex server and it works, I don't really want to go through the trouble of switching over if everything is working fine the way it is right now

Kodi is horrible on touch devices. I also don't want to have terabytes of files on every device I want to watch something on. Sure, there are workarounds, but I could also just use Jellyfin. Yeah I don't use Plex, I use Jellyfin.

But it's really just mainly because I dislike the UX of Kodi.

The real question is why anyone would use Kodi/Plex/XBMC over Jellyfin

The real question is why people pay for Plex when Jellyfin is free and open source

Well, I use plex, because I have used plex for a decade, and it just works.

That being said, if I were to use an alternative, Jellyfin is quite fantastic. I actually have a pod running it, just in the event that plex pulls a stupid move, causing me to lose faith in its platform.

But, that being said, I like the plex interface more then Jellyfin, and have grown accustomed to it.

Also, Kodi while powerful and extensible... just feels like a bear compared to Jellyfin.

They're for different things: Kodi is supposed to be used only on one system inside your network and is full of eye candy. It's roots are as a media app and dashboard for the original Xbox. It doesn't have any streaming functionality, it expects the media to be available locally (either physically attached or over a network share attached to the local system).

Plex was originally designed as a media server and has a Client-Server model to support multiple clients both inside and outside the network. It's more about functionality than looks. It was built from the ground up for streaming.

You can use the Kodi frontend with the Plex backend with a Kodi plugin called PlexForKodi. Same goes for Jellyfin.

I can use Plex on my PS5 and share it with my friends without having to do DevOps work.

those arent even the same thing

Plex was an easy to set up Netflix at home deal with apps on all my devices already for viewing ($5 one time fee for Android, less than a burger) and had some nice tutorials for setting up on a Pi.

Adding stuff is literally drag drop thanks to Samba. Stupid easy for me.

Because I paid for a lifetime sub like a decade ago and my parents and a few friends connect to my instance. I can't be arsed to move myself and everybody else to a new system when this shit just works.

I never had what I felt was good performance from Kodi. Of course it might have just been my configuration across the times I used it, but Kodi always felt laggy / slow.

I moved from plex to jellyfin, both of which feel more snappy

My issue with Kodi is that each client had to scan the library and generate thumbnails etc. That should be the server's job which is why I chose Jellyfin. Nicer UI too and more responsive with apps in stores so I don't have to load it manually to fire sticks

Much easier to set up and share with others. Kodi takes a lot of back end work to make it usable and I'm having a hell of a time getting consistent results to different devices from my NAS.

Plex took far less effort to do the same results but their paywall certainly justifies their ease of use

Laughs in stremio

I think they're best suited for different use cases tbh.

Plex makes it great to handoff and resume media on multiple devices, has native apps for everything (from Linux, to PS3, to Firestick, to XB1, literally you name it), makes it easy to share media with friends and family, has excellent media file name recognition, and lastly has Plexamp (which for me is an extra deal maker).

Recently visited a friend's house, and after logging into my Plex on their TV I could instantly resume whatever I was watching at home, as easily as I would have for a Netflix account.

If you do all your media consumption on a single device, or have no need to organise different libraries of media... then something like Plex/Emby/Jellyfin could be overkill - Kodi would be awesome in that case

Edit: typo

They're two different apps for two different purposes IMO. Kodi is better if you do a lot of local watching and are a tinkerer-type of person who enjoys the setup/troubleshooting process. Plex absolutely blows it out of the water in terms of ease of setup and remote streaming.

This isn't even to mention PlexAmp, which makes up probably 80% of my total Plex streaming, anyway. Again, I think PlexAmp is 10x better than any comparable Kodi mobile app.

Dunno, I use Emby

There was a point where a lot of people bought into Plex because it was cheap for what amounts to a lifetime subscription. Plus people don't like change.

Surprised there is so much support for Plex...considering what this group is about, and Plex being in bed with the media conglomerates.

Emby or Jellyfin...

i heard about Plex first. I'm familiar with the ecosystem and they haven't tried to fuck me badly enough to leave (they haven't tried to fuck me at all)

I was an original xbmc user (original, as in chipped Xbox Classic original - I still have it). I switched to Plex earlier this year. Why? Consistent user experience across multiple devices (three Chromecast GTVs, plus phones, tablets, and laptops), plus centrally managed user profiles for the five people in my house.

Sure - I probably could've done a lot of heavy lifting with scripts and plugins to make Kodi kind of achieve the same thing, but Plex Just Works.

I’ll cast my vote: Kodi is far superior to Plex. People are just too lazy to learn something. I have a library larger than Netflix and Kodi makes browsing it very simple.

Watch status syncing and the need to configure each device kinda sucks on Kodi. Great app nonetheless

i should have mentioned, i used emby (switching to jellyfin) for remote devices.. i just use kodi for local tv instances in the house.

From what I know Plex is the simplest solution between my qnap TS-230 and LG CX Oled. Kodi doesn't run on LG OS. This way I don't need any additional device. Without transcoding the TS-230 allows smooth 4k HDR playback even with bitrates up to around 100Mbit/s above that it gets stuttery. But I must say I can't really tell the difference above ~60Mbit/s.

But I love being corrected.

I used XBMC/Kodi for about 10 years until I tried Plex about a year ago. Kodi's filesystem-centric view on media feels outdated in a world where almost all software is using intelligent search and filtering along with natively supported media info imports. This stuff is possible with Kodi too, but the plugin interface feels dated too. I also found it to be a resource hog on embedded devices.

But Plex has its flaws too. It swings the needle too far in the direction of Netflix-y for my liking, which is why I recently tried Jellyfin.

Jellyfin is a perfect medium between the two approaches in my experience of using it for a few months. I'd recommend any Kodi users who are wary of Plex to try it out.

Plex is smoother in my Nvidia Shield TV Pro, Kodi does better with anime, as it doesn't want to transcode for stupid reasons though.

I switched to Plex because it was easier and I don't use it much anyway. It completely fulfills my needs and it always works - the only issues I've ever had were with the PC my server was hosted on. I've yet to run into any issues that would make me look into switching like I have with other software/platforms I've abandoned

Personally, I'm not a fan of the Kodi interface. To each their own.