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Comparison · Collab

HumHub vs Jellyfin

A side-by-side editorial comparison of HumHub and Jellyfin — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

HumHub vs Jellyfin: at a glance

FeatureHumHubJellyfin
SectorCollabCollab
Velocity score5.05.0
Sparks · 30d00
Top themessocial intranet, beta releases, upgrade migrations, permissionsrelease-candidate, performance, backend-rewrite, versioning
Last editorial update2h ago8d ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is HumHub?

HumHub's public feed carries only betas, and 1.19's is still about surviving the upgrade.

The four releases visible here are all pre-release: 1.19.0-beta.2 and beta.1, and 1.18.0-beta.6 and beta.5 before them. The 1.19 line is dominated by upgrade-path and data-integrity repair — a foreign key violation aborting the comment content_id migration on databases with orphaned rows, fatal errors when purging content whose underlying record was gone, and in beta.2 a fatal SCSS build loop left behind when the 1.19 move of static/themes into protected/humhub stranded an empty theme skeleton. Beta.2 also fixes a real leak: activities from private spaces appearing in the summary mail and dashboard of users holding only a pending invite or join request.

Read the full HumHub trajectory →

What is Jellyfin?

Jellyfin renumbers to 12.0 and spends the whole cycle paying down its backend rewrite.

Jellyfin is deep in a 12.0 release-candidate train — five RCs since late June — that exists almost entirely to stabilize the backend rewrite shipped in 10.11.0. The project also renumbered along the way: 10.11.x becomes 12.x, dropping a leading "10." that had made every release read as minor. The outgoing 10.11.x stable line is still getting fixes, but 10.11.11 is down to a single locking change.

Read the full Jellyfin trajectory →

HumHub vs Jellyfin: editorial side-by-side

H
HumHub
COLLAB
5.0

HumHub's public feed carries only betas, and 1.19's is still about surviving the upgrade.

◆ Current state

The four releases visible here are all pre-release: 1.19.0-beta.2 and beta.1, and 1.18.0-beta.6 and beta.5 before them. The 1.19 line is dominated by upgrade-path and data-integrity repair — a foreign key violation aborting the comment content_id migration on databases with orphaned rows, fatal errors when purging content whose underlying record was gone, and in beta.2 a fatal SCSS build loop left behind when the 1.19 move of static/themes into protected/humhub stranded an empty theme skeleton. Beta.2 also fixes a real leak: activities from private spaces appearing in the summary mail and dashboard of users holding only a pending invite or join request.

◆ Where it's heading

The 1.19 cycle is being spent making the migration survivable on real installations rather than adding capability, which is the usual shape when a schema and directory-layout change meets databases and webroots that have accumulated years of drift. Beta.2 extends that into the installer itself, where an unreachable database was offering to re-set-up a live instance during a transient outage. The permission and visibility fixes point the same way: tightening authorisation and content boundaries is cleanup of an existing model, not an extension of it.

◆ Prediction

Only beta tags appear in this feed, so a 1.19.0 stable is the obvious next milestone, but nothing here dates it. The beta.1-to-beta.2 gap of about a month is a faster rhythm than the roughly six months between the 1.18 and 1.19 betas.

J
Jellyfin
COLLAB
5.0

Jellyfin renumbers to 12.0 and spends the whole cycle paying down its backend rewrite.

◆ Current state

Jellyfin is deep in a 12.0 release-candidate train — five RCs since late June — that exists almost entirely to stabilize the backend rewrite shipped in 10.11.0. The project also renumbered along the way: 10.11.x becomes 12.x, dropping a leading "10." that had made every release read as minor. The outgoing 10.11.x stable line is still getting fixes, but 10.11.11 is down to a single locking change.

◆ Where it's heading

The RC rounds are getting narrower as the train converges. RC1 was a cumulative dump covering the move to .NET 10, removal of legacy API route middleware and deprecated API members, and an HLS transcode seeking refactor; RC5 is batched database lookups and a fix for image endpoints upscaling past the source resolution. The 10.11.x branch is now being maintained mainly as an upgrade floor — 12.0 refuses to install on anything older than 10.10.7 and runs a multi-minute migration on first boot.

◆ Prediction

With RC5 down to query batching and individual endpoint fixes, a 12.0 final looks near — likely one or two more RCs at most. The plugin story is the loose end: the RCs still tell testers to disable external plugins and reinstall from the unstable repository, and that has to resolve before a general release.

Alternatives to HumHub and Jellyfin

Other Collab products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either HumHub or Jellyfin.

See all HumHub alternatives → · See all Jellyfin alternatives →

Recent activity from HumHub and Jellyfin

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 14h agoHumHubPrivate-space activity leak, installer 503 handling and the stranded theme skeleton
  2. 9d agoJellyfin12.0 RC5: SQLite cache and batched lookups cut query load
  3. 17d agoJellyfin12.0 RC4: MP4 track detection and SyncPlay queue fixes
  4. 29d agoJellyfin12.0 RC3 reworks bitrate reporting, speeds book collections
  5. 29d agoHumHub1.19 upgrade migration and orphaned content fixes
  6. 1mo agoJellyfin12.0 RC2 revamps the startup UI, defers heavy DB tasks in scans
  7. 1mo agoJellyfinJellyfin drops the '10.' prefix and opens 12.0 on .NET 10
  8. 2mo agoJellyfin10.11.11 adds a UserManager lock helper
  9. 7mo agoHumHubLogin screen, theming and validator fixes
  10. 9mo agoHumHubGroup manager options and assorted UI fixes

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between HumHub and Jellyfin?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. HumHub and Jellyfin are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 5.0 vs 5.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.

Is HumHub better than Jellyfin?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. HumHub and Jellyfin are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 5.0 vs 5.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to HumHub?

Top HumHub alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "HumHub alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/humhub for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to Jellyfin?

Top Jellyfin alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Jellyfin alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/jellyfin for the full list with editorial commentary on each.