This thread was a "why does remote access matter", not a comparison of Jellyfin and Plex.

I run both and Jellyfin is very clearly an open source project.

By that I mean that the interesting technical problem (streaming) is implemented rather well and there is a UI that technically has buttons to expose the things it does while simultaneously not being good at many of the things people use Plex for.

Jellyfin's remote access story is "set up a VPN or Tailscale". Plex's remote access story is "it works".

Jellyfin's story for accessing content from multiple servers doesn't exist. Neither does a global auth system for sharing access to your library, having friends, etc.

Jellyfin's sorting, filtering, and searching are just OK. Its web UI is nowhere near as nice for libraries of O(1000).

Real world example: I was at an AirBnB last week that had a Roku TV. To get to my Plex library I installed the Plex app. There was a Jellyfin app but I couldn't use it because there was no VPN client for the TV, and I don't feel the need to set up and run Tailscale when I already have Wireguard.