Owncast vs Streamlabs Comparison 2026
Both cover live streaming. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Owncast | Streamlabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | From $19 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | Not stated |
| Runs on (they differ) | macOS, Windows, Linux | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android |
| Covers |
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.
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.
Only on this side
- Covers video hosting
Streamlabs
Streaming with alerts, overlays and tipping
Streamlabs wraps OBS in something friendlier and adds alerts, overlays and a donation page. Setup takes minutes rather than an evening. It is heavier on system resources than plain OBS.
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.