Owncast
Decentralized single-user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options.
- Media Servers
- Go
- MIT
- Actively maintained
GitHub stats
- GitHub stars
- 11,575
- Forks
- 1,184
- Open issues
- 152
- Commits, last 12 months
- 1,396
- Last commit
- Oct 5, 2026
- Latest release
- v0.3.0Sep 3, 2026
- Created
- May 24, 2020
Data from the GitHub API, refreshed daily.
About Owncast
Decentralized single-user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options. Owncast is open source under the MIT license and written mainly in Go, so you can read the code, run it on your own hardware and keep full control of your data.
The project has 11,575 stars and 1,184 forks on GitHub, with 1,396 commits over the last year. It installs natively rather than through an official Docker image, so plan for a short manual setup.
Topics
- video
- streaming-video
- livestream
- hls
- chat
- rtmp
- broadcasting
- self-hosted
- golang
- live
Open-source alternative to
Owncast can replace these commercial products. Compare every option on each page.
Repository preview
Similar apps
More apps like Owncast
Other projects in Media Servers, ranked by GitHub stars.
Jellyfin
jellyfin/jellyfin
Media server for audio, video, books, comics, and photos with a sleek interface and robust transcoding capabilities. Almost all modern platforms have clients, including Roku, Android TV, iOS, and…
FeaturedMedia ServersC#DockerSRS
ossrs/srs
A simple, high efficiency and real-time video server, supports RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, HTTP-FLV and SRT.
Media ServersC++DockerInvidious
iv-org/invidious
Alternative YouTube front-end.
Media ServersCrystalDockerKodi
xbmc/xbmc
Multimedia/Entertainment center, formerly known as XBMC. Runs on Android, BSD, Linux, macOS, iOS and Windows.
Media ServersC++MediaMTX
bluenviron/mediamtx
Ready-to-use, zero-dependency real-time media server and proxy to publish, read, record, playback and route video/audio streams over SRT, WebRTC, RTSP, RTMP, HLS, MPEG-TS, RTP.
Media ServersGoDockerPeerTube
Chocobozzz/PeerTube
Decentralized video streaming platform using P2P (BitTorrent) directly in the web browser.
Media ServersTypeScript
What is Owncast?
Owncast is a free, open-source app you can host on your own server, listed in our Media Servers category. Decentralized single-user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options. The source code lives at github.com/owncast/owncast, where it has 11,575 stars.
Is Owncast free and open source?
Yes. Owncast is open-source software released under the MIT license, so you can self-host it at no cost. You only pay for the server it runs on, and some projects also offer an optional paid cloud plan.
Can I run Owncast with Docker?
Owncast does not list an official Docker image. It installs natively (Go), so follow the install steps in its README or look for a community-maintained container.
What are the best alternatives to Owncast?
Popular open-source alternatives to Owncast include Jellyfin, SRS and Invidious. Owncast itself is a self-hosted alternative to YouTube.
Is Owncast actively maintained?
The most recent commit to Owncast was on Oct 5, 2026 with 1,396 commits in the past twelve months. The latest release is v0.3.0, published Sep 3, 2026. Check the open issues on GitHub to gauge how quickly maintainers respond.