Castr vs Owncast Comparison 2026
Both cover live streaming and video hosting. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Only Owncast has a free tier.
Side by side
Castr | Owncast | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $19.99 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Paid subscription | Free |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | 7 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | None |
| Runs on (they differ) | Web | macOS, Windows, Linux |
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.
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
- Works with YouTube
- Works with Facebook
- Works with Twitch
- Works with Kick
Owncast
Your own live streaming server, free
Owncast is a self-hosted live video server with chat built in, so a streamer can broadcast to their own site instead of to somebody else's platform. Any encoder that speaks RTMP points at it, which means the software already on a streaming desktop works unchanged. There is no account, no cut and nobody able to demonetise you. What replaces those things is a server bill and the job of keeping it alive.
Our note
Estimate your bandwidth before assuming free software means a free stream, because a few hundred concurrent viewers is where self-hosting stops being cheap. For a small, loyal audience and a creator who dislikes depending on a platform, this is the only tool here that removes the platform entirely.
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.