plex-limiter

Automatically toggles qBittorrent's alternate speed limits based on active Plex stream bitrate. When a high-bitrate stream starts, bandwidth is throttled. When the last such stream ends, full speed resumes.

Important

Webhooks are a Plex Pass feature. This app will not receive any playback events without an active Plex Pass subscription.

How it works

Plex sends a webhook on every playback event (play, resume, pause, stop). On play/resume, the app queries the Plex sessions API to get the actual stream bitrate and compares it against a configurable threshold. If the stream is heavy, qBittorrent's alt speed mode is enabled via its Web API. On stop/pause, the session is removed from tracking, and alt speed is disabled once no heavy streams remain.

Multiple simultaneous heavy streams are handled correctly — throttling stays on until all of them end.

Tech

• Python 3.13 with uv for dependency management
• FastAPI — webhook receiver and status endpoint
• httpx — HTTP client for Plex and qBittorrent API calls
• Docker / Compose — recommended deployment

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables.

Variable	Default	Description
THRESHOLD_MBPS	40	Streams at or above this bitrate trigger throttling
QBIT_URL	http://localhost:8080	qBittorrent Web UI address
QBIT_USER	admin	qBittorrent username
QBIT_PASS	adminadmin	qBittorrent password
PLEX_URL	http://localhost:32400	Plex Media Server address
PLEX_TOKEN	(required)	Plex authentication token (how to find it)
LOG_LEVEL	INFO	Python log level (DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR)

Setup

1. Configure Plex webhook

In Plex Web → Settings → Webhooks, add:

http://<your-host>:9090/webhook

2. Configure qBittorrent

Enable the Web UI in qBittorrent (Tools → Preferences → Web UI) and set your desired alternate speed limits (Tools → Preferences → Speed → Alternative Rate Limits).

3. Deploy

With Docker Compose:

services:
  plex-limiter:
    image: ghcr.io/tasztalos69/plex-limiter:latest
    container_name: plex-limiter
    hostname: plex-limiter
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "9090:9090"
    environment:
      LOG_LEVEL: "INFO"
      THRESHOLD_MBPS: "40"
      QBIT_URL: "http://qbittorrent:8080"
      QBIT_USER: "admin"
      QBIT_PASS: "adminadmin"
      PLEX_URL: "http://plex:32400"
      PLEX_TOKEN: "your-token-here"

If qBittorrent and/or Plex are on the same Compose stack, attach this service to their network instead of using host addresses:

    networks:
      - your_existing_network

networks:
  your_existing_network:
    external: true

Standalone with uv:

uv sync
PLEX_TOKEN=your-token QBIT_URL=http://localhost:8080 uv run uvicorn src.app:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 9090

Status endpoint

GET http://<host>:9090/status

Returns current configuration and active heavy sessions:

{
  "threshold_mbps": 40,
  "heavy_sessions": {},
  "qbit_url": "http://qbittorrent:8080",
  "plex_url": "http://plex:32400",
  "plex_token_set": true
}