Castr vs Owncast Comparison 2026
Castr is a hosted live streaming platform from $16.67 a month billed annually, with VOD, a paywall and 24/7 playout channels handled for you. Owncast is free, open source software you run on your own server, with chat built in and no account or platform cut, but the bandwidth and machine to run it are a real bill of their own. Free software is not the same as a free stream once real viewers show up.
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 |
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.
Why people weigh these two
- Owncast instead of Castr
- Owncast is a free self-hosted streaming server, the do-it-yourself answer to Castr's hosted channels and paywall.
- Castr instead of Owncast
- Castr adds a built-in paywall for charging viewers, a feature Owncast leaves for you to build yourself, from $19.99 with the hosting included.
Which one should you pick
Castr is worth paying for the moment you would rather not run a server: hosting, a paywall and scheduled channels come bundled into $16.67 a month billed annually, with 2.4TB of bandwidth already included in that price.
Owncast is the right choice only for someone who wants no platform at all between them and their audience, and who has, or is willing to learn, the skill to run a server. Estimate bandwidth honestly before assuming this saves money: a few hundred concurrent viewers is where self-hosting stops being cheap, and there is no algorithm here to help anybody find the stream.
Common questions
- Is Owncast actually free to run?
- The software costs nothing, but bandwidth and a server do not. A stream with real viewers becomes a genuine hosting bill, which is the honest comparison against Castr's subscription rather than a saving.
- Which one handles hosting and infrastructure for me?
- Castr does, for $16.67 a month billed annually, including 2.4TB of bandwidth. Owncast requires installing and maintaining your own server.
- Does either include a paywall for charging viewers?
- Castr does, on streams and recordings both. Owncast has no platform, and therefore no built-in paywall; anything like that would need to be built separately.
- Which suits someone who wants full control and no platform dependency?
- Owncast. There is no account, no cut and no policy but the one you set, which matters most to a streamer whose content is at risk of a platform's own rules.
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.