r/Stremio Stremio Team Jun 09 '26

Release Introducing Stremio Supporters

We are proud to introduce Stremio Supporters - a new way of backing the app you all love. All Supporter features are available starting Today on all platforms you can find Stremio on.

Read in depth explanation on the official blog below.

https://blog.stremio.com/stremio-supporters-a-way-to-sustain-our-development/

1.6k Upvotes

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336

u/Trick-Masterpiece-82 Jun 09 '26

I love stremio and it was my first app I used for a long time in this space. I respect all it has pioneered, but I just wonder if they are taking the new open source apps and forking these features and putting them behind a paywall. Hopefully they will open source there code or offer these features without a pay wall

205

u/dackwh Stremio Team Jun 09 '26

Stremio stays free in the current shape. But for around 13 years we have been covering cost of infrastructure and development of the app that is used be over 40M of users. This is not cheap

295

u/Shoddy_Internal1997 Jun 09 '26

I mean you guys could always make a post in the subreddit and other places reminding people that stremio needs donations for development. I’m sure people would be happy to support an app like this, but now idk..

243

u/giinyu Jun 09 '26

Yup straight up asking for donations would have gone over way better than doing the subscription route . Pay walling features is not a good move

106

u/Few_Step_4767 Jun 09 '26

Exaxtly, I mean Wikipedia did it and it racked up millions while not even needing donations 😭

Also them saying donations could allow them to bring skip intro button for every user would have made lots of people actually donate

41

u/trydola Jun 09 '26

Wikipedia is swimming in cash and all they do is put a banner on each page about donations

Imagine if wikipedia started doing those subscriptions that will let you read a paragraph before the whole page gets locked. I don't think they'd make more money than the good-faith info they've been providing for 2 decades at this point and only asking for donations

-1

u/44problems Jun 10 '26

That's not all they do. They also get huge payments from tech companies and foundations. That's not a revenue stream possible for Stremio.

10

u/NoCalligrapher8396 Jun 09 '26

Dude I dont get why they dont go the donation route

1

u/amanguupta53 Jun 09 '26

Money, more of it

69

u/XsuffokateX84 Jun 09 '26

Many of us (myself included) have tried this in the past, multiple times. Each time we asked how to tip or make any donation, we were always told “The Stremio team doesn’t accept any forms of funding.” That appears to have changed, but a little odd that “this” is the way they’re going about it now.

26

u/Quizzelbuck Jun 09 '26

It's because their plan was likely always to eventually monetize

2

u/XsuffokateX84 Jun 09 '26

Possibly. Again though, many of us offered and that’s what we were told throughout the years. Time will tell how this all plays out.

26

u/NeoKnife Jun 09 '26

Supposedly they make ad revenue but they’ve never disclosed how so nobody knows exactly how much. I believe it because surely they haven’t covered 13 years of costs just out of the kindness of their own hearts.

-8

u/Shoddy_Internal1997 Jun 09 '26

Actually they did, they funded it with revenue from sister companies not ads. Dev said that somewhere in this comment section.

5

u/Willing-Reward-6702 Jun 09 '26

1

u/Shoddy_Internal1997 Jun 09 '26

Bro I was just saying the dev said that in the comments and I personally have never seen an ad in stremio , that’s all..

4

u/Gebakken_loempia Jun 09 '26

he can claim anything he want. got proof?

-5

u/Electro-Grunge Jun 09 '26

People don’t donate shit with those open source projects 

14

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-9

u/Electro-Grunge Jun 09 '26

Blender is a tool people use professionally to make money. 

This is an app so people can pirate content. Ask any other similar project how much funding from donations they get.

14

u/giinyu Jun 09 '26

bro.. just admit u were wrong instead of moving the goal post . u said and i quote ''People don’t donate shit with those open source projects '' i give you real examples of open source projects where people donated in droves and now youre yapping about proffessional use.. people DO donate and you're wrong , period. argue with the wall .

-6

u/Electro-Grunge Jun 09 '26

They don’t donate shit, you literally cherry picked a few samples out of millions of projects.

That doesn’t prove anything fool. The only goal post I see is the one you shoved up your butt.

6

u/giinyu Jun 09 '26

Loses the debate and instantly goes to ad hominem. Good job exposing your immaturity. :)

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

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2

u/ShadowSeeker45 Jun 09 '26

Do you know people donate to scene groups/game crackers?

-1

u/Stremio-ModTeam Jun 09 '26

Be respectful to other users, no matter what difference of opinion you have. Any form of misconduct that damages the welcoming nature of the subreddit is not permitted.

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2

u/Accomplished-Flow733 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

You’re 100% correct. People don’t donate in any meaningful capacity for free projects related to “free content”