SHSelfHostIndex

Media Servers

Stream your own movies, shows, and music with self-hosted alternatives to Netflix, Spotify, and Plex.

177 self-hosted apps · 504 comparisons

All media servers apps

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 459 words

For video, this category has a short answer: run Jellyfin. It is completely free with no paywalled features, has 56,192 GitHub stars, clients for TVs, phones, and consoles, and hardware-accelerated transcoding that turns a $150 used mini PC into a household Netflix. The longer answer below exists because "media server" also covers music streamers, HTPC players, live-video servers, and a whole download toolchain that is not a media server at all.

How to choose a media server

Decide what you actually stream. A music-only collection does not need Jellyfin's weight: Navidrome runs in 128 MB of RAM, speaks the Subsonic API, and therefore works with a dozen polished mobile apps you didn't have to build a library around. Koel is the prettier-web-player alternative, but it needs a separate database and offers fewer transcoding options.

Then decide server or player. Kodi keeps appearing in these lists and it is a player: a 10-foot interface that runs on the machine plugged into your TV, playing local or network files. It doesn't stream to your phone, and it maintains its library per-device. Kodi on the TV pointed at a Jellyfin server is a fine combination; Kodi alone is a different product.

Finally, check transcoding hardware before buying anything. Direct play costs almost nothing, but one 4K HEVC transcode will flatten a CPU without a GPU assist, and Intel Quick Sync on an 8th-gen-or-newer chip is the cheap fix. Pass /dev/dri into the Jellyfin container and mount media read-only; the server only ever writes to its config and cache.

Where to start

Jellyfin for anyone with movies and TV — Easy difficulty, 512 MB minimum, no account or subscription, with the one caveat that remote access is manual where Plex holds your hand. Navidrome for music collectors, including alongside Jellyfin; mount the library read-only, since it never needs to write to your files. Kodi only if you're building a dedicated home-theatre PC and know you are choosing a player.

The stack that isn't a server

qBittorrent, Sonarr, and Jackett rank high in this category and none of them serves media. They acquire it: Sonarr automates episode management, Jackett translates tracker APIs, qBittorrent downloads. Newcomers regularly install Sonarr expecting to watch something with it. Treat acquisition as its own project with its own legal judgement calls — the arr stack explained covers how the pieces connect, including the shared-mount trick that makes imports instant hardlinks instead of copies.

My default for a first-timer: Jellyfin in Docker on any Intel box, media mounted read-only, and add Navidrome the day your music library outgrows it.

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Media Servers comparisons

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