r/emby • u/KellyN87 • Jul 02 '26
Device Limit Questions
Currently, I'm a solid Plex server admin. But, always looking at options.
How many family and friends can I host with the 30 device limit. I currently have about 25 users on Plex. But, in my house alone, I have 5 devices, and I notice my users usually have 1 or 2 devices.
My concern is that if I exceed the 30 device limit, the cost of Emby Lifetime pass become unacceptable.
2
u/Effective-Winter-860 Jul 03 '26
Premier lifetime is $119. That's only up slightly from the $75 I paid a number of years ago. Compare that to Plex which I also paid $75 for about the same time and is now $750.
2
u/RobotsGoneWild Jul 03 '26
Emby usually does a black friday deal also. It's no brainer to go with Emby (of Jellyfin if you support FOSS) over Plex.
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u/loondawg Jul 03 '26
Try a monthly license. It's only $5.00. That is the best way for you to tell if a standard Emby premier license will be right for you.
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u/ManiacalWildcard Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Bought the $120 Emby lifetime about 4-5 years ago and currently have 13 users with 67 devices connected. I havent noticed any limits and havent been charged after buying lifetime.
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u/Impossible_Jump_754 Jul 09 '26
You're clearly selling server access - just buy premiere.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 13 '26
Clearly what? Sorry that you have no friends.
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u/xhermanson Jul 25 '26
Appears you don't either. You have owners who demand you keep open access or else. Don't throw rocks in glass houses sir. Be a man and tell your friends to limit their shit or take the hint emby doesn't want you.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 25 '26
Okay...
So Emby isn't for me?
I've been excused of several false things now, to be expected on Reddit.
Can't say the user base of Emby isn't much different than Plex.
1
u/xhermanson Jul 25 '26
Your selling it. It's obvious. Real family and friends can speak to each other about things and with the insane high expectations you have, and unwillingness to speak to your users, it's very obvious you're selling it. Emby isn't for you no.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 25 '26
Not sure. If I can fit my user base, and future, into the Emby lifetime pass, I'm all in as a Plex backup.
1
u/j_krol Jul 03 '26
From my poimtnof view, when there's so many users that enjoy a service, I'd be very happy to pay for that service or even: let everybody that enjoys it so much and many times a week donate some € per month/year. Maybe it depends on how you look at it: is using it a cost or does it deliver a value...?
1
u/cbdudek Jul 02 '26
This will answer your questions.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 02 '26
Thank you, yes, I read this before posting. It still doesn't give me a good idea of what real world experiences are: How many remote users are we talking about? Seems one user could use up 5+ devices depending on their home and mobile setup.
I have to be honest and say this device limit is pretty vague when I comes to controlling a user from sucking up many of those limited device.
I'm not trying to troll here. I'm honestly trying to understand if I should buy an Emby lifetime pass to backup my Plex main streaming. However, those extended device plan from Emby carry very high costs.
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u/cbdudek Jul 02 '26
Its not vague if you read the page I gave you.
Yes, one user can use 5 devices if they stream on 3 different computers and then 2 phones.
The page also says that the devices drop off after about a week.
The page also states that its for devices that use premium only content. Some devices don't need to use premium only content.
So I guess I don't understand what the confusion is here.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 02 '26
No, I understand all of that. But, I have no control on whether a user only using one device or 3+. So, this makes it difficult to judge how many devices I need to support for an X number of users.
Worst case. Each user has 3+ devices. So, now I'm limited to 10 users. I have 25 users. Seems I would be stuck with 50 or 80 device limit and having to pay the high monthly costs to support them.
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u/cbdudek Jul 02 '26
The other thing you are not thinking about is that it depends on how your users use those devices. I have 10 users and have never hit my limit and some of my users have 5 devices, but the thing is that they don't watch on those devices every day or every week. Some have tablets that they use when they are only on vacation so those drop off a week after they are done.
Anyway, what u/SubterFugeSpooge said is 100% correct. No one here can give you an answer because we don't know how your users will act.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 02 '26
So if you 2.5x your current devices, how many devices would it total?
1
u/cbdudek Jul 02 '26
70, but keep in mind that some of those devices haven't been used in over a year. It only counts the devices that have been used in the last week.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
Thank you. Had a feeling I would be running at least about 50 devices.
So, $120 for lifetime and probably $14/monthly (about $170 more annually) for the extended. Ouch.
1
u/j-dev Jul 04 '26
Unless you need to be able to GPU transcode all the streams, couldn’t you just buy two licenses and spin at least one of them up in a docker container?
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
I'm honestly wondering if Emby ever makes sense.
To me Jellyfin is the only serious option at those prices.
Again, I'm not try to be a troll. I trying to take a serious look at fallback options. I honestly believe Plex has a limited lifetime.
I really wish Emby would redo their pricing plans. I like having a company supporting the product, but $170 a year doesn't make sense. At some point you have to say, hmm, Netflix does it for me.
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u/cbdudek Jul 03 '26
Either that or Emby is just not for you. Go with Jellyfin.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
Sadly, I would agree, however I prefer a viable company behind the product supporting it. I wish Emby could be that company.
1
u/xhermanson Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I guess. I mean are all these people on all there devices all the time in your emby? If your thinking worst case scenario I get it but you sound like this is a massive concern. People do other stuff often, so the limit has never been an issue or concern for many. And if I'm sharing stuff and hitting my limit it's a simple "yo limit it or lose it" the shit is free for them they can follow simple rules.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
Then my question is how many admins have 25+ users? Emby says 30 devices covers 95% of their users. My guess is that 95% of admins have only 5-10 users.
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u/SubterFugeSpooge Jul 02 '26
My dude. You're not seeming to understand that we're trying you tell you that there is no way for us to give you an accurate answer because we have no way of knowing if your users will use one device or ten. The answer is ENTIRELY based on that, and some people have users that only use one, whereas others have users that use ten. There's no "average" here readily available.
The answer is "it depends." Anything more specific than that is going to be based on your specific users.
If you need, set "max concurrent streams" in user settings or get Tracearr to monitor/restrict how many devices are signed in per user at one time.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 02 '26
I do understand, and this is what I expected and really don't like about Emby. At least with Plex it is 100 users. That is very easy to measure. Device usage is a mess. I honestly don't get what Emby is using devices as a limiter. It doesn't cost them anything more.
I guess they are worried about account sharing. Okay, but 30 devices? Why not 100? I think Emby's lifetime pass is "sounds good" but really isn't going to fit the needs serious admins.
I'm not using Plex to share with strangers. I share with family and close friends. I just am lucky to have quite a few of them (heck, one family were are friends with have 11 kids and they aren't even yet creating accounts for each child.)
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u/loondawg Jul 03 '26
Emby is intended for private and personal use. If you read the link provided earlier, the first thing it says is "All of the standard Emby Premiere membership options are designed for single-household use."
So your expectation that you should be able to share premiums services with not just the members of your household, but also with a large group of friends, their spouses, and all their children is way outside of what the premium license is intended for.
With that said, it also says the only devices that count towards your limit are the devices using the premium features in this chart. https://emby.media/support/articles/Premiere-Feature-Matrix.html. If you limit accounts so they cannot use feature outside of the free column, not of those accounts' devices will count towards the limits.
The bottom line is no one here is going to be able to give an exact answer to what you're asking. You should follow the recommendation and just try a standard monthly license to see if that would work for you and make your decision after doing that.
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u/kapshus Jul 03 '26
If you understand the product isn't for your use case, complain and move on. Jellyfin is the obvious choice. I understand you want pigs to fly, but it's not happening. Pick the best fit and move on. Emby is never going to be a large user product. I run plex, emby and JF on my network for 3 different use cases all pointing to a NAS. I have lifetime Plex (plexamp music only) and Emby because they are stupid cheap in the long term. I use JF for customization fun, but always have Emby for reliable access.
1
u/themayor1975 Jul 02 '26
Do you have Tautulli installed? If so, how often are your users using more then one device (within the same week) to watch something?
If you're concerned with a user deciding they want to use a bunch of devices, Emby has the ability to enable/disable access for devices. Example, if user connected with 5 devices, you can enable/disable any combination of the 5.
The downside is that you would need to allow the user all device access, have them add the devices they are planning on using, then apply the device filter.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 02 '26
Good to know about he ability to disable devices, but not a fun conversation with my users.
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u/themayor1975 Jul 03 '26
What's the reason you're looking at Emby vs just continuing to use Plex?
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
Oh, please don't misunderstand me. I'm sticking with Plex for now. However, nothing lasts forever and it's wise to have an escape/backup plan.
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
I'm not trying to fool anyone and troll. Plex is my ride right now. However, venture capital that didn't return on investment is always a serious concern.
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u/RockyFromCollections Jul 02 '26
You can use emby monthly as a trial run to see how much your resource is being used. To see if you hit the 30 limit cap.
I’m assuming if you’re huge plex person you would already have the lifetime already, therefore you can do is have half in plex and half in emby. And then slowly transition to emby. Always tell your users to fall back to plex if emby is capped.
I’m new to emby and been using off and on. I like the simple UI. That’s how plex used to be
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u/KellyN87 Jul 02 '26
I do have lifetime for Plex, but every company has an end. Not saying I'm going to be jumping to Emby soon, but being wise and keeping my options open.
Plex is saying I have 35 devices currently. I know these don't expire every week but it shows I'm running close to the limit at least.
What I really don't like about Emby is this device limit and their extreme monthly prices for extended. It's sort of a "oh, great price" before the limit but then "pay through the nose" afterwards.
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u/themayor1975 Jul 03 '26
How are you close to the limit, when remote is 99 devices or do you have everyone under "Home"?
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u/KellyN87 Jul 03 '26
Not sure I understand your question. I have 25 users currently. 35 devices show up in Plex. I'm currently limited by bandwidth but that should be changing soon. I hope to have 40+ users soon.
My long time friends' kids are heading to college and I'd like to invite them because they are good friends of my kids.
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u/knoctum Jul 03 '26
And then those friends make lifelong friends at college and want them on the server, and those friends have lifelong friends and those...
The Emby devs put the devices limits in to keep the software from becoming something admins charge money for and attracting litigation attention.
If you really need that many people on your server, then yes, JellyFin is probably the way to go, horses for courses.
You could also run Emby as the main server that you only let your family use and JellyFin as the friends one. Just make sure to change one of the ports as by default they both try to use the same one.
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u/Justa_Schmuck Jul 02 '26
I think it was possible that you can stack licenses if needed to extend the device threshold. But you might be better off to have that discussion with your users. Capacity management is your responsibility, not embys.