Having a Plex Server makes it really easy to stream your content to your TV or computer. IPhones are a different story though. Although there is a Plex app, in order to use it you have to buy a Plex Pass for $5 a month. What is the point of owning your streaming content if you have to rent the platform you stream it on? Fortunately there are some free ways to watch Plex on your iPhone.

The Plex Web App

The simplest way to stream Plex to your iPhone for free is to use the Plex Web interface. You can just open up a web browser and go to plex.tv. You can log into Plex like you normally would on your computer and watch all your content through the Web UI. Its a great option if you don't want to buy a Plex Pass. You get all of your content organized just how you want.

There are some down sides to this method though. The web interface is not made for phones. It's usable but its pretty awkward to use. The buttons and navigation icons are often too small to be practical.

If you are in a pinch and need to watch your latest content urgently on your phone and you don't have a Plex Plex, use this this method. Otherwise keep reading.

Use DLNA apps

DLNA, or Digital Living Network Alliance, is a tech standard that allows for streaming devices to talk to each other and stream your content. You can set up your Plex Server to work with DLNA and then download DLNA apps on your iPhone to be able to easily stream.

There are a few catches to this method. First, you can only streaming from your local network. You can not do any kind of remote access. This may be a deal breaker for you but there are some ways to mitigate this that we will talk about later. Second, There are some DLNA iPhone apps that aren't great at finding metadata from your content so it may not look as pretty as the native Plex app does. But that videos will look that same and that's all that really matters.

Before we can start using DLNA apps, we need to enable DLNA support on our Plex server. This is actually a really easy process. Heading to plex.tv and log in to your account. Open your account settings. Go to the DLNA tab on the left and make sure the "Enable the DLNA server" box is checked.

Now you are ready to get some apps. Here are a few free DLNA iPhone app to try.

NOTE: We have no affiliation with any of these apps.

iPhone DLNA App #1: PlayerXtreme Media Player

PlayerXtreme, by iStreamer, is a great media player that supports almost every format that you can imagine. It is available for both iPhone and iPad. It has all the features that you would expect including:

• Easy to use UI with movie posters
• Numerous options for adding media over a network
• Casting to TV with Airplay

If you need a DLNA app, I would try this one first. It does a lot of things really well. The interface is easy to use. Its snappy and responsive with better performance than similar apps. There are multiple options for streaming including from a URL, Youtube, or WebDAV. The option we care about though is the DLNA. If you followed the previous step and set up your Plex Server to work with DLNA, the app should find the server without issue and you will have access to all or your media.

There are two things that are somewhat annoying though. First if you do you DLNA with the app there are a LOT of extra folders and categories. It can be hard to find what you want to watch. This is not PlayerXtreme's fault, its how Plex DLNA works. I find the experience to be a little better if I just use my Plex Server as a network drive that way all media files are in the folder I expect them to be. So if you have a network drive or SMB set up on your you may want to try that out.

The second problem is that DLNA only works over your local network. There complicated ways to get it to work remotely but I would suggest a different alternative. The app has a really great way to download your movies right onto your iPhone. That way you don't even need to have a network connection at all to watch it, if you are away from home and your server. The downloads are really easy to manage and once you watch something you can just delete the download so it doesn't take up space on your phone's relatively small hard drive.

The app does have a subscription that adds some extra features. The subscription is cheap but unnecessary for basic streaming.

Overall PlayerXtreme is a great free DLNA app that you can use to stream your Plex collection to your iPhone (or iPad) without any hassle. You can check it out in the Apple Store here

iPhone DLNA App #2: VLC for Mobile

A second app to stream Plex via DLNA is the reliable VLC. VLC for mobile, by VideoLAN, is a free and open-source option that plays every kind of media and runs on every kind of platform, including the iPhone.

VLC is very similar to the PlayerXtreme app and does most of the same things. On my phone, it did seem to be a little more laggy and just didn't feel as snappy as PlayerXtreme, (which is why I wound try that one first). But VLC was quite capable and worth trying.

Again, as long as you following the steps above and set up DLNA on your Plex server, VLC should find is easily on your local network. Just go to the "Network" tab and it should be listed there for you to select.

VLC has the same two downsides of PlayerXtreme - 1) THe DLNA menu is cluttered with useless folders and 2) it doesn't work remotely. Fortunately it has the same two solutions. If the cluttered folders are a problem for you, set up a network or SMB drive on your server and open that in VLC instead. If you want to watch your content away from home, you can download files straight to your iPhone, watch them remotely without network access and then easily remove them from your phone when you are done with them.

Although I didn't find VLC to have as nice of an interface as PlayerXtreme, it was still pretty good and had all the features you will likely need. Give it a shot and see how you like it.

You can find VLC for Mobile on the App Store here.

Buy a Plex Pass (Not Free)

If you want a more cohesive solution you can do what Plex suggest and buy a Plex Pass. Plex Pass is an upgrade for Plex that gives you a few cool benefits that you don't get with the free version. One of the biggest add-ons is the ability to use the iPhone and iPad versions of the Plex Client App. If you want the classic Plex experience this may be the way to go. There are a couple of options for pricing:

• Monthly: $4.99
• Annually: $39.99
• Lifetime: $119.99

Conclusion

Personally, Plex is a great way to ditch the month payments to the streaming and/or cable companies. I don't really want to substitute those payments for a payment to Plex for a Plex Pass. While some of the features of the paid Plex plan are nice to have, most of the added features have near equivalent free ways to do the same thing.