4 Best Kodi Alternatives - Stream Vulture

Kodi is a popular home entertainment app that’s available for most desktop operating systems, mobile devices, and streaming devices.

Perhaps the app’s most significant attraction is the add-ons. They provide access to on-demand movies and TV shows, live TV, and live sports—not always entirely legally.

But Kodi also has one major drawback. It’s not easy to use as a server. Sure, it’s possible, but it requires networking knowledge and is thus beyond the technical expertise of most users.

So, what Kodi alternatives are out there? Are there any apps that are better than Kodi? Keep reading to find out.

1. Best Overall Kodi Alternative: Plex

Plex started life as a Kodi fork for macOS, but it’s now unrecognizable from the original app. Today, Plex is much better than Kodi if you need an app that can double as a server.

In many respects, Plex is not as customizable as Kodi. However, unless you’re a hardcore tinkerer, that shouldn’t be an issue.

And what Plex lacks in customization, it makes up for with the steady stream of new features that have been coming online in the last few years. They include customized news clips, podcast support, support for over-the-air channels, and more.

Plugin support on Plex is also being phased out. Plugins were Plex’s answer to Kodi’s add-ons, but they were never as popular and never got as much traction.

For extra features, consider signing up for a Plex Pass. A lifetime plan costs $120.

Finally, remember that Plex great Kodi alternative for Fire Stick users because, unlike Kodi, it is available in the Amazon Appstore.

2. Best Kodi Alternative for Multiple Services: Stremio

One of the big issues people face with cord-cutting is the fragmentation of content across services. As a user, it quickly becomes irksome to need to check five different services just because you can’t remember which one of them currently has the distribution rights for Friends.

Stremio tries to solve that problem. It relies on add-ons to provide a content aggregation system. It means you can watch streams from services like Netflix, iTunes, HBO, YouTube, Twitch, and more from within a single interface. It has support for subtitles and casting, and even notify you when new episodes of your favorite shows become available to watch.

3. Best Kodi Alternative for Customization: Emby

Emby is more similar to Plex than to Stremio. It focuses on acting as a central hub for your locally-saved collection of movies and TV shows. Like Plex, it relies on two apps—a server and player. The machine on which you install the server needs to be running whenever you want to watch something.

If you enjoy customization, Emby is better than Plex thanks to its open-source nature. It means you can apply your own CSS to the web app, change the login screen, use other people’s themes, and more.
Like Plex, you can also use Emby to watch live TV and record content via the built-in DVR.

4. Best Kodi Alternative for Streaming Movies and TV Shows: Popcorn Time

Rightly or wrongly, Kodi is famous thanks to its ability to access streams that fall into a legal grey area. Popcorn Time is similar. You can use it to stream torrents in real-time, effectively putting a library of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes at your fingertips. To the user, it feels like the movies are locally-saved; you would never know the difference.