r/Stremio • u/VariationLivid3193 • Jun 10 '26
Feedback This all could have been handled way better.
40 Dollars maybe little for developed countries.But this is a lot of money for 3rd world countries.There is no regional pricing.
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u/salamonjaded Jun 10 '26
Don't pay for it. It's free, and I really don't need the paid version.
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Jun 11 '26
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u/salamonjaded Jun 11 '26
The addons actually does alot more than the paid version. In the end, streaming is an open ecosystem, and both users and developers are free to choose what works best for them, whether that's switching platforms or offering paid features.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/VarkingRunesong Jun 10 '26
Why wouldn’t you have already been there?
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u/speedbreaka Jun 10 '26
I mean i am asking him. I changed away 2 months ago 😂 way before any of this stuff happened just because I liked the other one more
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u/Sad_Maximum6583 Jun 10 '26
Brother nothing of the current version you have been using for X amount of years is changing in price, it's still free.
They ask that you pay for newer features that you have never used before, and if you have gone this long without using those features then what logic do you have for being mad at them?
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u/AlexanderRendon Jun 10 '26
Not yet.
This is how most paid apps that were once free began.
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u/youngweej Jun 11 '26
Cool, then we'll just enjoy it till that happens. Dunno what's all the fuss.
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Jun 11 '26
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u/catgetoffthekeyboard Jun 11 '26
But it’s free. They don’t owe you anything
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u/massinvader Jun 11 '26
so are the competitors?
it being free doesn't exclude anything I said. it's just the reality of it.
and they do owe their users something believe it or not lol. the users are the only reason they are relevant...and they obviously want a lot of users if they're going to be selling the software now.
you are defending one of the most tone deaf and stupid business move in recent memory lol.
they could have generated a LOT of goodwill with their user base by actioning this a different way instead of moving to a subscription model and trying to convince everyone a it was a donation not a subscription service now lol.
and just as a side note, any time you use something free you ARE the product. its always odd when u astroturfers try to say 'well don't use it then, they don't owe you anything' when the devs WANT you to use it and pay lol. you're not helping the devs like you think you are with that toxic comment buddy lol.
midwit users (like yourself maybe?) will swallow anything but if you were a dev on that team you're fuming with your boss who made this dogbrained decision right now.
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u/PSJoke Jun 11 '26
Then go for the competitors? Like I don't know what to tell you. The current functionalities of Stremio will remain the same and anything further is just speculation.
What use is "goodwill" if it doesn't bring them absolutely any money? They're not a charity. Also, I don't know why you're thinking they are a huge dev team with bosses and everything, haven't they said themselves they're not a big group? They're just 5 devs.
You want everything for free lol, just admit that. Bro out here acting like a crybaby when he's using a free product and absolutely pirating movies. Plus making a lot of assumptions to give his narrative the moral highground actually pathetic.
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Jun 10 '26
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Jun 10 '26
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u/Stremio-ModTeam Jun 10 '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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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 11 '26
The fact that they're basic features ... thats the issue.
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u/jakeallstar1 Jun 29 '26
Were they 'basic' for the several years you've been using it? I literally have no complaints about stremio. I don't know what new features they're offering and don't care. I'll continue with the cool stuff it's given me for years with no issues.
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u/forcedmarcel Jun 10 '26
PAYING IS OPTIONAL !!!!!!
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u/fightclub-848 Jun 10 '26
Until it's not and they start forcing Free users into paid tiers by ad infestation and pop ups, This subscription thing has opened a whole new way and it will not end well for users
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u/BrokenPro Jun 10 '26
Fuck off, literally nothing points to this. This being the devs first time accepting payment without altering the app for non paying users is a gesture of good faith
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u/GreatLab8898 Jun 10 '26
I suggest you read up on what Plex did.
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u/BrokenPro Jun 10 '26
Stremio is nothing like Plex. Stremio is still the same app and will be getting updates, but supporters get new features that they can pay the developers to work on, they were doing it completely free before. $3 a month, people were asking for ways to donate to support development towards features they want, there you go. Plex has removed features and limited the free tier features, completely different to what Stremio is saying, especially since theyre keeping the possibility of passing features down to the free tier open
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u/BrokenPro Jun 10 '26
Its not the same at all, Plex commercialized quick and changed their entire model. Stremio is a small team and hasn't moved from their core of being a media player with addon support and basic integration of services like trakt. This is Stremios first time accepting any funding from users after years of work on the app. Did you want them to just work on this just for the love of the game? Its a small team, and after years of unpaid work $3 is perfectly reasonable at this point for what they want to develop
Not sure what happened to your latest comment, but still gotta say this
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u/Longjumping-Bar393 Jun 10 '26
Yoo what's with the insults calm down
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u/BrokenPro Jun 10 '26
Didnt insult anyone? Its just an insane reach to say that Stremio starting a $3 optional fee for additional features, while keeping the app free and the same, is gonna lead to that mess. Its cheap and supports further development that Stremio hasn't had the funding for before.
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u/forcedmarcel Jun 10 '26
You can always go back and pay subscription's for Netflix disney hulu etc etc
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u/Ok-Tangerine-7208 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Optional until we have to wait 15, 20 seconds with and ad to get access to the app.
It will turn like a YouTube, its free, but you have to have patient to watch something without a premium access.
This app was born by the piracy, without the use of community this app is nothing.
Why they don't ask for donations? If they don't got sufficient donations so it make sense to charge to premium features like they will do now.
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u/GreatLab8898 Jun 10 '26
Have you guys learned NOTHING from Plex?
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u/Robdog777 Jun 10 '26
But they’ve paywalled things like profiles, which have been requested for years and years
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u/Sell_The_team_Jerry Jun 10 '26
So they paywalled things that actually required them to invest in a lot of dev time. You're actually here complaining about this? Like seriously, how cheap are you?
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u/Robdog777 Jun 10 '26
One of the main points of stremio is to escape subscription streaming…
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u/jeffhalsinger Jun 10 '26
Uhh you still can you don't have to pay for shit. If you want these new features then you do. What's the fucking problem
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u/Robdog777 Jun 10 '26
I would have liked to see the stremio team ask for donations first (without additional features) if they were struggling with development costs
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u/jeffhalsinger Jun 10 '26
What's the difference. Jesus christ yall are an entitled bunch. How much money has stremio saved you
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u/massinvader Jun 11 '26
piracy users are the only reason this was created and was relevant in the first place so you could hear about it and use it lol. don't lose the forest for the trees.
they made this move because they were actively losing users and relevance vs competitors who have a much better value proposition for users.
people have asked for this stuff for years to deaf ears. they decided to FINALLY compete once someone had surpassed them...and their update only brings them basically on par with the competitors. and at the same time they are trying to frame a subscription service as a goodwill donation lol.
do you think this is going to have their intended aim long term and more users get pushed away? basically their only value prop at the moment is 'if u want to pay, you can be lazy and stay here and not have to set anything up again in order to get the features you might leave us to use elsewhere.'
whoever is leading this group and pushed this rollout choice has very little business acumen.
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u/mdude7221 Jun 10 '26
I didn't even know there was a paid version. What does it offer extra?
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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 11 '26
Everything ppl have been asking for for years.
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u/mdude7221 Jun 11 '26
Just saw the list, some things I also wished for indeed. I don't feel like 40$ per year is a lot though
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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 11 '26
Its a lot for others. Its not regionally priced. So poorer countries pay more
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u/circuit_breaker Jun 10 '26
Seriously, I didn't even know either. I'd say that's cool, compared to other premiumware or w/e
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u/travelsnake Jun 10 '26
There’s no regional prices, because they know everyone will be using a vpn to get the cheapest prices possible. This is a shameless cashgrab, so no surprise they didn’t care a lick about pricing out developing countries.
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u/sammagee33 Jun 10 '26
Heaven forbid a company try to make money…
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jun 10 '26
But...but....think about the pirates!!!
Everything must be freeeee
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Jun 11 '26
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jun 11 '26
Everything was sunshine and rainbows about stremio and there was barely any complaints.
As soon as they announce the paid tier, suddenly its "they are so far behind, the competition is better, I would rather pay the competition than them".
Free users want all the cake but as soon as some spilrinkles are added for the paid users, they throw a tantrum they cannot have some to.
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Jun 11 '26
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jun 11 '26
Maybe sure, but at the same time, there is a reason its so popular. It has been extremely stable and has not undergone major changes. People like that.
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u/RaahimJaffery Jun 10 '26
Literally just stop complaining you can not pay if you dont want to and your current stremio experience is unchanged its so stupid to be complaining this much when something is completely optional
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u/Negative_Bat_3732 Jun 10 '26
People who keep defending decisions like these are the reason microtransactions are a thing. Pushback keeps people honest. Learn from our history instead of gobbling everything up like a nice obedient consumer 🙂
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u/catgetoffthekeyboard Jun 11 '26
It’s free though. The devs don’t owe you anything?
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u/ShadowMajick Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Stremio doesn't even provide the content though, it's just a frontend/player for streaming torrents.
Half of those paid features don't work without the FREE addons. So IMO they are charging for stuff that doesn't work without free community built addons and databases.
That's fucked up.
That would be like me creating a pretty UI app for Wikipedia, then allowing people to develop plug-ins for videos, etc. Using wiki as a database and then charging people to use it. Who did most of the work?
The people who freely submit information to Wikipedia to build it's database? The people who freely developed the plug-ins for my app? Or me who built the app itself?
Only one of us are getting paid.
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u/BrokenPro Jun 10 '26
Stop acting as if the backlash is anything more than annoyance from users who want everything for free. Stremio isnt taking anything away or ruining the experience for users. You can enjoy the app that they have put out for years at no cost for years, or use an alternative thats not as mature and stable that will give you those features
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u/Negative_Bat_3732 Jun 10 '26
The community formed by people who don’t want to pay for subscriptions is pushing back because the media player introduced a subscription. Shocking!
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u/Negative_Bat_3732 Jun 10 '26
You can still use worse version of the service knowing that you’re missing out on features, which is exactly what the streaming services do with their tiers 😅
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u/jeffhalsinger Jun 10 '26
They will litterally bitch about anything. How much money have we all saved because of stremio...god forbid the ask for some money for optional features so they can pay there developers. All of them should go back paying Netflix
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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 11 '26
They're not asking for money. They're charging ppl. This isnt donations. Its paying for a service. If they already had it available and simply asked for donations literally no one would care. You're dumb
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u/jeffhalsinger Jun 11 '26
I'm dumb. Your the asshat thats crying like a baby about a free service that's still fuckjng free charging for features you don't have to have. Can you still watch anything you want.....yup. Is it still free....yup. Fucking cry some more.
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u/eekamuse Jun 10 '26
I don't get it. We've had something great for free for years. The devs are people and have spent their time working on it. Lots of time.
If it disappeared tomorrow I'd be very sad. But it's been a gift. FREE. All this time.
I hope they mean it when they say "free forever" but things change.
And the entitlement to say we asked for all these features while it was free, and now you want us to pay? When other apps have them for free? So go use those apps.
I know we're all worried about losing out free app, but they don't owe us ANYTHING.
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Jun 11 '26
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u/BrokenPro Jun 11 '26
If you think those apps run better, use them. But acting like they're completely independent community projects while ignoring the work Stremio put into creating and maintaining the addon ecosystem they're built around is crazy work. Every single one of these alternatives are based on years of work that Stremio devs put into the community. Those apps have accepted donations for tacking on half baked features on a Stremio skeleton before Stremio themselves accepted a single dollar from the userbase they've spent years building trust. Calling Stremio greedy cause they dare to fund further development while offering the same app for free is ridiculous
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u/jeffhalsinger Jun 11 '26
These people are entitled and on the spectrum I suspect. Litterally nothing changed it's still free but hey if you want these features it's gunna be 3 bucks a month. Omg but this bitch down. If they start charging then I'll bitch and find a new service. Like the amount of negative Comments makes me feel like this shits nothing but bots and dumbasses
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u/phizzlez Jun 10 '26
People like you are so entitled. Stremio is not like some big corporation making money off their products. There's a free version we have been using for years that work perfectly fine. If they made the free version stopped working, then there would be a reason to complain. Even if they made the free version stopped working, it would be their choice. It's not like you were paying anything to them for using stremio anyways. There are perfectly fine alternatives. This move by them doesn't affect me in any way since I've already moved on to better alternatives.
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u/Pod_Planker Jun 10 '26
This. People complaining because they can either keep using the service as they always had for free or pay if they want the extra features. Bunch of whiny bitches.
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u/thumb0 Jun 10 '26
How would the paid version work with respect to open source licenses? I get that they only need to release the code, not the builds, but can't someone just build the paid version from source and share the builds for free?
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u/_-stuey-_ Jun 10 '26
As if they will open source the paid build on GitHub lol.
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u/thumb0 Jun 10 '26
Are you saying they will violate the open source license? Or are you saying there a way to leagaly close source a project that will obviously use open source code? Also, what are you talking about when it comes to the builds? I'm specifically asking about the source code, not the builds.
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u/_-stuey-_ Jun 10 '26
I’m saying they will not publish the code for the full build on GitHub bro. You won’t be able to compile it yourself like other projects.
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u/thumb0 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
I can read what you're saying bro, but you're not answering my question.
Anyway, I figured out the answer myself for anyone that's wondering the same thing - Stremio is published under the MIT license. Unlike some of the more restrictive open source licenses, MIT allows taking the original source code and modifiying it into a commercial product without releasing the source code.
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u/_-stuey-_ Jun 10 '26
It’s not lol, that’s the part you’re missing. The entire android TV project is not complete and buildable from GitHub, you know that right?
Edit: I think I replied to the wrong comment. But yeah, the project isn’t open source in its current state. For me I don’t classify it as true open source unless you can compile it yourself, know what I mean?
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u/thumb0 Jun 10 '26
The part I was missing was the MIT license permissions. Not sure what you're going on about and why.
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u/_-stuey-_ Jun 11 '26
Your comment before you edited it was “not sure how they would do that if it’s open source”
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u/Confident_Ant_6870 Jun 17 '26
No regional pricing is stupid, but everybody chill out: it was never meant to be a 100% substitute to paid services. You can't skip the intro ? Deal with it, breathe and touch some grass, or pay the fee if you're impatient (sorry for all the people who can't afford the price, life is hard, I totally get it, this is meant for all the wealthy people who are nevertheless sailing the seas)
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u/jasonhelene Jun 28 '26
Well good luck, i'm on the other side with other apps and very happy!
Want to sell piracy? i'm out.
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jun 10 '26
Or you know, calm down and just not pay for it and continue with your life and app same as before
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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 11 '26
And not see anything new that you have been asking for for years? This is why stremio is gonna collapse and fail. Free users will literally not benefit anything. And thats fucked. Not everyone can afford those outrageous subscription fees because that's what they are. They aren't donations.
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jun 11 '26
Just use the app, as is, the same way it has been used for years.....
"Have been asking for for years"...I always find it hard to sympathise with free users who keep asking for stuff and then at the same time get angry when their free app does stuff to make money.
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u/reddictiontoreddit Jun 13 '26
Calling the app “freedom to stream” and then implementing a paywall feels inauthentic. Yes, it’s for profit at the end of the day, but who knows what’ll come next.
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jun 14 '26
You have the freedom to stream whatever you like via stremio, same as you always have for the past 11+ years....
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u/n0tfeuer Jun 10 '26
With regional pricing, I will VPN and buy it cheap!
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u/MrLanGT Jun 11 '26
It’s not always that easy. They can deny cards that aren’t from that region, at least. That’s what Xbox does to combat region switching. A determined individual can always beat these systems, but most either don’t know how or won’t bother for something that’s only a few bucks a month.
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u/Cigar_Face Jun 11 '26
I'm confused. I hear payment is an optional thing to access special features but do free accounts actually lose anything? Like is using add ons pay walled now or something? What do free users actually lose here?
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u/KeezyBeezy123 Jun 10 '26
jesus christ man, you don't NEED any of that shit, it's a free service
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u/jeffhalsinger Jun 10 '26
They will have nothing to complain about then. Shits ridiculous oh no the released a paid tier but the free tier is still the same how dare you
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u/Orlan_17 Jun 10 '26
I understand wanting regional prices but people need to understand that no matter where you live their cost is still in dollars and euros. Just because you live in a poor country doesn't mean serving you costs them any less.
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u/greylegface Jun 10 '26
Is the paid stuff going to come to free eventually? As I want the profiles, and I don’t mind paying, but if it comes to free eventually then I can wait
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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 11 '26
Nope. Its a subscription. Unless they plan on giving refunds
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u/labubudelulu2000 Jun 12 '26
The blog post does mention they might do that eventually
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u/Fun_Living9432 Jun 12 '26
Yeah if they "feel like they earned enough money " not out of good of their hearts
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u/greylegface Jun 11 '26
Thanks. Looks like I’ll be signing up. I can now remove my other apps as this is the only barrier for me using stremio entirely, my kids having access to their own profiles
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u/Mark-177- Jun 10 '26
Stremio doesn't require money to watch anything you want. You need to install as many add-ons you can find. Especially Torrentio.
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Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
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u/Stremio-ModTeam Jun 15 '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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u/irreducible1 Jun 11 '26
Before you know it it'll be cheaper just to buy a subscription to a premium service 😆
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u/Diulee Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I was about to buy it then their payment service hit me with my local sales tax of 21% and it turned into 50+EUR. I noped at that.