Jellyfin vs Navidrome
Jellyfin and Navidrome are both media server software. Jellyfin is open source under GPL-2.0, with 59k GitHub stars. Navidrome is open source under GPL-3.0, with 24k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Jellyfin when
- You want Plex or Emby features without accounts, subscriptions or a vendor cloud.
- Pick Navidrome when
- You own a music library and want Spotify-style access to it from any device.
Side by side
A free media server that organises and streams your movies, TV, music and photos to web, mobile and TV clients, with transcoding and live TV.
A self-hosted music server that streams your own music collection to a web player and to any Subsonic-compatible mobile or desktop app.
Client apps on some TV platforms are less polished than Plex's, and hardware transcoding needs setup.
Music only, and the master branch can be unstable, so run tagged releases.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server (both)
C#, .NET and FFmpeg
Go, JavaScript and SQLite
Open source, GPL-2.0 (strong copyleft)
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license. (both)
59k GitHub stars
24k GitHub stars
Established: started 8 years ago, latest release v12.4.
Established: started 10 years ago, latest release v0.64.2.
Other comparisons
More media servers
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.