Dacast vs Owncast Comparison 2026
Dacast is a hosted broadcaster platform: live channels, a built-in paywall and white-label playback for $39 a month billed annually. Owncast is free, open-source software you run on your own server, with chat built in and no account, cut or policy standing between you and viewers. Free is not the same as cheap here: real viewers mean real bandwidth, and that bill is the honest comparison against a hosted service rather than a saving.
At a glance
- Only Owncast has a free tier.
Side by side
Dacast | Owncast | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $39 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free trial, then paid | Free |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes |
Dacast
Live streaming and hosting sold by the terabyte
Dacast is a broadcaster's video platform: live channels, a paywall, white-label playback and a bandwidth allowance measured in terabytes a year. Unused bandwidth rolls forward, which suits anybody whose schedule is a season rather than a week. It sells to events and businesses rather than to social creators, and the interface has never pretended otherwise.
Our note
The three-month minimum on monthly billing is the term to notice, because it makes a single event cost three payments. Buy this when you are selling access to the stream itself; for hosting recordings, SproutVideo or Vimeo is simpler and cheaper.
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.
Why people weigh these two
- Owncast instead of Dacast
- Owncast is your own live streaming server, free and self-hosted, if you would rather run the infrastructure than rent it by the terabyte.
- Dacast instead of Owncast
- Dacast hosts the stream for you and bills by the terabyte, trading Owncast's own server bill for a paid plan and none of the server upkeep.
Which one should you pick
Pick Owncast if control matters more than convenience and you are willing to run a server: no platform cut, nobody able to demonetise the stream, and any RTMP encoder already on your desktop points at it unchanged. Budget for bandwidth once real viewers show up, since video bandwidth is the expensive kind and a few hundred concurrent viewers is where self-hosting stops being cheap.
Pick Dacast if you would rather pay a predictable monthly bill than manage a server, and you need the paywall, white-label playback and pay-per-view already built for selling access to a broadcast. Starter is $39 a month billed annually for roughly 200GB of bandwidth monthly, with unused allowance rolling forward, and monthly billing carries a three-month minimum.
Common questions
- Is Owncast actually free to run?
- The software costs nothing, with no paid tier anywhere. What it does cost is a server and bandwidth, and video bandwidth is expensive, so a stream with real viewers becomes a real hosting bill rather than a free one. Dacast avoids that server management entirely for a flat $39 a month billed annually.
- Does either platform take a cut of what I earn?
- Owncast takes nothing: there is no account, no cut and nobody able to demonetise the stream, since you own the server it runs on. Dacast charges for bandwidth and platform features like its paywall instead of taking a revenue share.
- Which one is easier to set up?
- Dacast, since it is a hosted platform: sign up and start streaming, with a 14-day trial to test it. Owncast requires installing the server yourself and pointing an existing RTMP encoder at it, which is a real setup step Dacast does not ask for.
- Will an algorithm send viewers to either platform?
- No, neither is built to find you an audience. Owncast runs on a server nobody has heard of until you tell them about it. Dacast is built for selling access to a broadcast to people who already know to look for it, not for discovery.
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.