In an announcement posted on the Plex forums, the company has announced that from next week, users of its Roku app will have to pony up for what it calls a remote watch pass, to access content when away from home. The remote watch pass will then roll out to all of its other clients, regardless of platform, at some point in 2026. In other words, it doesn't matter if the client is on Android TV, Apple TV, Fire TV or any other platform, if it's not on your home network, you might have to pay up for the remote watch pass.

Note that this doesn't apply if you are paying for a Plex pass, which means that those that either pay monthly or annually, or have gotten a lifetime Plex pass, don't have to worry about the remote watch pass to stream to devices outside their home. Plex calls the remote watch pass an optional subscription, which in all fairness is true, as it's not needed for those that just want to use Plex in their home, and it might be possible to work around it using a VPN, but it makes things more complicated. The remote watch pass will cost US$1.99/€1.99 per month, or US$19.99/€19.99 annually. Earlier this year, Plex increased the pricing for its Plex pass by not an insignificant amount and this seems like another way for the company to get some recurring revenue, but there's also a chance that it'll backfire and users will switch to alternative software.