Dacast vs Owncast Comparison 2026
Both cover video hosting and live streaming. 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
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 | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | None |
| Runs on (they differ) | 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.
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.
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.