Best VPS for Plex/Jellyfin in 2026: Bandwidth, Storage, and Transcoding

Best VPS for Plex/Jellyfin in 2026: Bandwidth, Storage, and Transcoding

Running Plex or Jellyfin on a VPS can work well - but the “best VPS” depends on your constraints:

• Do you need high egress / unmetered bandwidth?
• Are you storing media on the VPS (storage-heavy), or mounting external storage?
• Do you need transcoding (CPU/GPU), or direct play only? This guide covers the checklist and how to shortlist candidates with CheapVPS Finder.

The Plex/Jellyfin VPS checklist

1) Bandwidth/egress policy (often #1)

Media streaming is bandwidth-heavy. Before you compare CPU or NVMe, confirm:

• Transfer caps (GB/TB per month)
• Overage pricing
• Port speed / throttling
• Fair-use policies (for “unmetered” plans) Shortlist: Unmetered egress plans.

2) Storage (capacity and I/O)

If you store media on the VPS, you’ll want enough disk and acceptable I/O.

• For metadata and small libraries, SSD is fine.
• For lots of small reads/writes (metadata, posters, scanning), NVMe can help. Shortlist: NVMe VPS plans.

3) Transcoding: CPU/GPU requirements

Transcoding is expensive. If you can avoid it (Direct Play), you can use cheaper plans. If you do need hardware acceleration, start with:

• GPU VPS plans If you’re CPU-only, validate CPU performance on:
• Performance

4) Location (latency matters less than bandwidth)

For streaming, bandwidth and stability typically matter more than latency - but don’t pick a region that’s extremely far from your users. Use VPS Finder to filter by region, then validate real throughput.

How to shortlist Plex/Jellyfin plans with CheapVPS Finder

1. Start with a shortlist page:

• Unmetered egress (if bandwidth is your main constraint)
• NVMe (if storage I/O is your main constraint)

2. Then open the full filter tool:

• VPS Finder (budget, region, IPv6, refund, tags, latency)

3. Compare costs and signals:

• Deals and VPS coupons
• Methodology for how scoring works

Basic deployment approach (Docker)

Many users run Jellyfin/Plex via Docker. A minimal workflow:

1. Provision the VPS and secure SSH access.
2. Install Docker.
3. Run the container with persistent volumes. You should treat your first deployment as a validation run: measure CPU load during playback and confirm throughput is stable.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Assuming “unlimited” means unlimited: verify fair-use and throttling.
• Ignoring renewal pricing: always check whether promos expire.
• Over-allocating CPU for Direct Play: it often doesn’t help.
• Not planning backups: media libraries and configs still need backup strategy.

Next steps

• Start with Unmetered egress or NVMe.
• Use VPS Finder to narrow by budget + region.