Ant Media Server vs Castr Comparison 2026
Both cover live streaming. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Sub-second streaming you run yourself
Live streaming with hosting and a paywall
At a glance
- Castr starts cheaper, at $19.99.
- Neither has a free tier.
Side by side
Ant Media Server | Castr | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $109 | From $19.99 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | 7 days |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | Not stated |
| Runs on (they differ) | Web, Linux | Web |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Ant Media Server
Sub-second streaming you run yourself
Ant Media Server is streaming infrastructure rather than a streaming service: it takes RTMP or WebRTC in, transcodes, and delivers with latency measured in fractions of a second. Licences are sold by the instance, by the hour for something that runs occasionally and by the month for something always on. SDKs are included rather than sold separately. This is a product for whoever is building the streaming app, not for whoever is going live tonight.
Our note
Work out your hours before choosing between the hourly and monthly licences, because the crossover is around the twentieth day of uptime and event streaming rarely gets near it. Anything running continuously should be on the monthly licence from the start rather than discovering that at the end of a billing period.
Castr
Live streaming with hosting and a paywall
Castr covers the parts of streaming that sit either side of the broadcast: hosting the recording afterwards, running a 24/7 playout channel, and putting a paywall in front of either. Bandwidth is sold as a pool rather than metered per viewer. It is priced for a business running channels, not for somebody going live on a Sunday.
Only on this side
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.