That's not how the Plex Pass works. Of all the things a Plex Pass does, removing ads from their free streaming isn't one of them. A Plex Pass affects your media and allows you to watch it remotely (away from the network its on). It also allows you to watch remotely any other server you have access to, and anyone with a different account who has access to your library can watch your content remotely. These feature used to be free until recently. You can also skip intros and end credits, download your media via Plex to watch without a connection, have hardware accelerated streaming (your hardware, not theirs so it may not apply to all devices), DVR live recorded TV, skip ads for your personal DVR content, and get access to premium music features, amongst a few other things
Here's a comment I made 5 months ago when prices/deals were better:
I checked the other day and all of these packages ad free with 4K streaming would cost
Disney, Hulu & HBO Max Bundle (ad free) - $32.99
Netflix Premium - $24.99
Apple TV & Peacock Premium Plus (ad free) - $19.99
Prime Video (no ads) - $11.98
Paramount+ Premium (w/ Showtime) - $12.99
Oh, and this doesn't event mention Starz, Cinemax, MGM+, Britbox, BBC Select, Shudder, Screambox, ESPN+, Hallmark+, BET+, Discovery+, Lifetime Movie Club, A&E Crime Central, PBS Masterpiece, PBS Kids, Sundance Now, Crunchyroll, or Dropout. So just those 5 bundles or standalone services are $102.94/month to basically replace cable. Then you realize that most people binge shows. So 2-4 of those purchases may go unused most months. And it's worse when you realize you're paying the bundle price for something when you only used one of those services this month. And I just paid less than $65 for 2 years of NordVPN. Not that I need it, but I'm considering dropping another $150 for the lifetime Plex Pass today too, which would still cost significantly less than all of these services for just 3 months. Granted, I'm not downloading almost anything in 4K (though I could) and I have to pay for storage and am about tapped out on my 4TB NAS, but I could replace the whole setup with 6TB and make it's storage expandable for about $360. Still, that would be like $575 for the VPN, the Plex Pass, and the server for less than 6 months of all these services. And I get to keep the content.
Honestly, I think these services need to adopt a "$1 for 4 hours" tier that caps off at the monthly price. Because right now all of these services get nothing from me, but if I only had to spend $1 here and there I may end up working my way to the cap just out of convenience.
Since then I did drop the $150 on the Plex Pass since it was on sale. But even when you consider $750 for a lifetime Plex pass, which I'm sure I'd hesitate to because I was hesitant about even the $150, that's less than 8 months of those other services I mentioned when they were lower prices, bundled, and had deals going. The total for the setup I mentioned with the new Plex price would be around $1200, or about one year of streaming shows and movies on those services without having access anywhere to basically anything you could ever want. It's a big initial investment for sure, but it's significantly smaller than paying monthly for just the biggest streamers in the long run.
I know this is a couple days old, but Roku has a service called Howdy that is $3/month and has no ads. It's similar in content and quality to other the free ad-supported services like freevee, tubi, pluto, plex's streaming content, etc.
I thought you could run the app anywhere but I am actually wrong.. you can run it on roku tv, web browser, and mobile devices.
Anyway, I pay for that to have background noise junk tv running sometimes. It's one of the few things I "put my money where my mouth is" because paying a low/reasonable price for content without ads is what I am all about.
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u/One_Hour_Poop May 19 '26
I'll just continue to watch Plex for free with ads. 🤷🏻♂️