Flex vs Playlist Maker
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Flex
This app allows you to manage and play your personal music library hosted on a Plex Media Server. Enjoy offline playback, customize your queue, and personalize your listening experience with various themes and visualizers.
- Plex Media Server integration
- Offline music downloads
- Customizable playback queue
- Theming and visualizers
- Smart playlist management
- Lyrics and artwork display
- CarPlay and Siri integration
Read full descriptionHide full description
Your music library should feel like yours. Flex Music is an independent music player and playlist manager for personal Plex Media Server libraries. Sign in with Plex, choose your server and enjoy your music at home, remotely or offline. BROWSE AND PLAY Explore artists, albums, tracks, playlists, genres and moods. Search inside large playlists, rate tracks back to Plex, and keep browsing while the mini-player plays. Expand Now Playing for artwork, synced lyrics when available, visualizers and the waveform progress bar. YOUR QUEUE, YOUR WAY Use Play Next to put a track first, or Play After Next to add it after your manually queued tracks. Assign these actions to your playlist swipes. Manage Up Next and Previously Played, reorder playlists, add whole albums and clone playlists. OFFLINE AND DATA SAVER Download your music with no paid track limit. Choose storage limits and keep favourites offline. Data saver asks your Plex server to convert audio to your chosen bitrate, with separate Wi-Fi and cellular preferences and measured transferred-data totals. Conversion depends on your server; data saved is compared with the original media size. MADE FOR YOUR SCREEN Choose themes, artwork effects and visualizers. Larger displays have room for the player and queue side by side. iPhone Duo adapts from a compact cover-screen player to a stacked portrait layout and a side-by-side player and queue when opened in landscape. Controls stay clear of the system strip, and your player and queue are retained as the layout changes. Music casting is free on supported receivers. Lyric casting brings available lyrics to Google Cast displays with Flex Music Pro. FLEX MUSIC PRO Free: browsing, playback, Smart Search, ratings, on-device lyrics, music casting, themes and visualizers, offline downloads, the Pinned Playlist widget, and editing playlists up to 100 tracks. Pro unlocks editing larger playlists, saving smart playlists and listening sessions, premium home-screen widgets, alternate app icons, navigation icon themes and styles, and lyric casting. The Apple Watch companion is also included with Pro. CarPlay and Siri playlist playback are free. Monthly, yearly and lifetime plans unlock the same Pro features. Purchases are processed by the App Store and can be restored from Settings. Lifetime is a one-time purchase; subscriptions renew until cancelled in your store account settings. REQUIREMENTS A Plex account and access to a Plex Media Server containing a music library. Network access to that server is required for streaming and library management. Flex Music is independently developed by Elixir Consultancy Services Ltd and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Plex, Inc. Plex is a trademark of Plex, Inc. Google Cast is a trademark of Google LLC. Terms of Service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Playlist Maker
Read full descriptionHide full description
Tell it a moment. It makes the playlist. Type what you want to hear, in your own words. "Monsoon evening on the balcony." "Shoegaze, but gentle." "Like Fleetwood Mac." "90s Bollywood drive." Mixtape builds a playlist for it and saves it to your Apple Music library, where it stays. MADE FROM WHAT YOU ACTUALLY LISTEN TO Mixtape reads your Apple Music listening and builds around it. Ask for a rainy evening and you get the artists you already love, not a generic mood playlist that could belong to anybody. Ask for something new and it stretches, but it stretches from you. SAY ANYTHING A moment. A mood. An artist you want more of. A genre. A decade. A language. A thing you are about to do. If you can describe it, it is a valid request. HEAR IT BEFORE YOU KEEP IT Every playlist arrives complete, and you can play any song from it right there, thirty seconds at a time. Remove what does not fit. Drag songs into the order you want. Keep it only when it is right. IT IS A REAL PLAYLIST Saved mixtapes go into your Apple Music library as proper playlists, with their own artwork. They play on your phone, your Mac, your car, your speaker, your watch. They work when Mixtape is not open and they stay if you delete it. YOUR SHELF Every mixtape you keep stays in Mixtape too, as a cassette you can start with one tap. Put them in folders once there are enough to sort. ASK SIRI "Make a playlist with Mixtape." Siri asks what you want to hear, builds it, and starts playing, without opening the app. ON YOUR HOME SCREEN One small widget holding one mixtape: the latest one you made, or a particular one you pin there. Tap it and the music starts. NO SUBSCRIPTION Mixtape does not charge a monthly or yearly fee. Making playlists is free and unlimited. Keeping one costs a tape, tapes are bought once, and they never expire. Nothing renews, and nothing is taken away if you stop. An Apple Music subscription is required to save playlists to your library. Terms of Use: https://playlistmaker.app/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://playlistmaker.app/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Playlist Maker at daily against Flex's every 2 months. Flex's advantage is iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Flex sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month and Playlist Maker sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Flex ships an update every 2 months, Playlist Maker daily. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Flex | Playlist Maker |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 132 MB | 18 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Elixir CS | Mohit Nandwani |
In-app purchases
Flex
- Flex Music Pro Monthly$0.991 Month
- Flex Music Pro Yearly$9.991 Year
- Flex Music Pro Lifetime$19.99
Playlist Maker
- 10 Tapes$2.99
- 25 Tapes$5.99
- 50 Tapes$9.99









