MediaMTX sits between cameras and viewers as a self-hosted live media server, taking in video and audio streams over one protocol and handing them back out over another, so one IP camera feed can end up playing in a browser, a phone app, and a recording archive simultaneously. Publish with FFmpeg, GStreamer, OBS Studio, a browser, or a Raspberry Pi camera over RTSP, RTMP, SRT, WebRTC, Media-over-QUIC, HLS, MPEG-TS, or RTP, and read it back on any other protocol without a transcoding pipeline. Run dozens of camera feeds side by side, each on its own path, and keep every path available even while its publisher is offline. Record everything to disk in fMP4 or MPEG-TS as it streams, then play recordings back later through the same server instead of shipping files around. Authenticate publishers and viewers with built-in users, an external HTTP check, or JWT, and use the control API plus Prometheus metrics to wire the server into the rest of your monitoring stack. Forward streams to other servers, proxy cameras behind NAT, and fire hook commands whenever a client connects, publishes, or disconnects, so a doorbell camera can trigger a snapshot or an alert as it starts streaming. Reload the configuration while clients stay connected, and tune everything from the same mediamtx.yml file or environment variables, with no database or runtime dependencies to babysit. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Viewers arrive on browsers, phones, and desktop players, and SRS meets each of them with the right protocol from a single published stream. A broadcaster pushing RTMP can reach browser viewers through WebRTC with sub-second latency, phone apps through HLS, and desktop players through HTTP-FLV, all from the same live source without running parallel encoders. WHIP endpoints accept WebRTC ingest from browser studios and tools like OBS, while WHEP serves WebRTC playback, so an entire publish-to-viewer path can stay on modern web protocols. Operators shape each channel with virtual hosts, authenticate publishers and players through HTTP hooks that consult your own backend, and record live streams to disk as DVR archives for replay. Forwarding republishes a stream to YouTube, Facebook, or another SRS instance, and origin clustering lets edge servers pull from a central origin so one ingest feeds viewers in several regions. The built-in HTTP API reports streams, clients, and server health for monitoring, and GB28181 support ingests surveillance camera networks alongside creator broadcasts. Configuration lives in a single reloadable file, so changing a vhost or enabling HLS rarely means restarting the listeners your audience is attached to. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Point OBS at it, and the same live stream comes out in whatever protocol each viewer needs. Xiu is an open-source live media server that accepts publishing over RTMP, RTSP, and WebRTC WHIP, then redistributes every stream as RTMP, RTSP, HTTP-FLV, HLS, or low-latency WebRTC WHEP playback. Cameras and encoders pushing H.264, H.265, or AAC over TCP or UDP become browser-friendly HLS and HTTP-FLV without a separate transcoding tier, and GOP caching gets late joiners to a keyframe fast. Static push and pull relaying chains servers together: one origin ingests, regional nodes pull, and audiences play from the node nearest them; RTMP clustering covers larger fan-outs. Every live stream can also be recorded straight to HLS files, giving you an instant archive of broadcasts, lessons, and town halls. Token authentication guards publishing and playback, HTTP callbacks report stream start and stop events to your backend, and an HTTP API answers stream information queries for your own dashboards and automation. Operators shape ports, protocols, relays, and recording in one configuration file or with command-line flags, running a single binary that stays out of the way until the audience arrives. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

With over 20,000 GitHub stars and adoption by companies building everything from telehealth platforms to AI voice agents, LiveKit is the most widely deployed open-source real-time communication server available. The Go-based Selective Forwarding Unit handles hundreds of concurrent participants per node with adaptive bitrate streaming, simulcast layers, SVC codec support for VP9 and AV1, and end-to-end encryption. Client SDKs span JavaScript, Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, React Native, Rust, Python, Unity, and ESP32 embedded devices, while server-side APIs cover Node.js, Go, Ruby, Java, Python, Rust, PHP, and .NET. The Agents framework enables building AI-powered voice and video applications — real-time speech-to-text, LLM-driven conversations, and computer vision pipelines — running as server-side participants in any room. Egress records sessions to S3-compatible storage or streams to RTMP endpoints, while Ingress pulls external feeds from OBS via RTMP, WHIP, or SRT into LiveKit rooms. The SIP bridge connects traditional telephony to WebRTC rooms for hybrid conferencing. JWT-based authentication, webhook notifications, room-level moderation APIs, and selective subscription give operators granular control. Deploy as a single binary for development, Docker Compose for production single-node, or Kubernetes with the official Helm chart for distributed multi-region clusters using Redis for state coordination. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Apache 2.0 licensed.

One Janus installation can host a video meeting in one session, stream a camera feed in another, and bridge a browser call into a telephone network in a third, because Janus is a general-purpose WebRTC server whose work is done by interchangeable plugins. The VideoRoom plugin publishes each participant's streams to everyone else in the room with simulcast and viewport selection, so a class or team call adapts quality per viewer instead of forcing one bitrate on all. Streaming mounts live or prerecorded sources, including RTSP cameras and RTP feeds, and hands them to any number of WebRTC viewers, while AudioBridge mixes voices into conference rooms with recording and signed-token access. SIP and NoSIP plugins register with existing VoIP infrastructure and place or receive calls, translating between WebRTC media and telephone audio so a web page can ring a desk phone. Record&Play captures publisher streams to files you can replay through the same server, TextRoom adds data-channel chat rooms, and Lua or JavaScript plugins let you script custom media logic without recompiling the core. Applications talk to Janus over HTTP or WebSocket APIs, with RabbitMQ, MQTT, and NATS transports for bus-driven deployments, and event handlers report session activity to your monitoring stack. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-3.0 licensed.

Point OBS or a hardware encoder at Restreamer's built-in RTMP or SRT ingest and it serves your website while rebroadcasting to YouTube Live, Twitch, Facebook, Vimeo, TikTok, LinkedIn, PeerTube, and anything else that accepts RTMP, SRT, or HLS - a complete self-hosted live-streaming server from datarhei. That multistreaming normally costs a monthly Restream.io subscription; here it's one FFmpeg process per destination on your own hardware. The web UI is genuinely approachable, with a wizard that walks beginners through camera setup, while professionals get the full surface: multiple audio/video inputs (USB, RTSP network cameras, virtual devices), codec and processing settings, separate audio muxing, and hardware acceleration via Nvidia CUDA, Intel VAAPI, or Raspberry Pi. Serving your own audience is first-class - a built-in Video.js player embeds in your site, a ready-made publication website streams without any embedding work, HLS chunk sizes are tunable, and automatic Let's Encrypt handles HTTPS. Viewer and bandwidth monitoring with limits keeps traffic costs predictable, and it's GDPR-friendly: no third-party provider, no audience data stored. A fully Swagger-documented REST API drives automation. SRT support keeps latency under a second.

Twitch and YouTube Live, replaced by infrastructure you control: Owncast is a self-hosted live streaming and chat server. Point OBS, Streamlabs, or any RTMP-capable broadcaster at the server's ingest port, and Owncast transcodes the feed with FFmpeg into HLS with multiple quality variants, playing it in a built-in web page with a real-time chat beside it. Chat supports anonymous participation, custom emotes, and moderation tools - message removal, user bans and suspensions - with optional authentication via IndieAuth or a Fediverse account. ActivityPub integration puts the stream on the Fediverse: viewers on Mastodon and compatible services can follow a channel and get notified the moment it goes live. Video delivery can come straight off the server or offload HLS segments to S3-compatible object storage so a modest VPS handles thousands of concurrent viewers while only managing ingest and chat. The backend is a single Go binary with a React frontend - no accounts platform, no database server, no dependency stack - and the player embeds in any website. MIT-licensed, with roughly 9k GitHub stars, zero platform fees, and no algorithm or takedown policy between you and your audience.

The fediverse's answer to YouTube comes from French non-profit Framasoft: PeerTube is a TypeScript/Angular video platform where hundreds of independently operated instances federate over ActivityPub into one network. Videos you publish are discoverable across the whole video fediverse, and viewers can follow your channels from Mastodon or any ActivityPub platform - or plain RSS - without needing an account on your instance. The namesake innovation attacks video hosting's core cost problem: alongside HLS delivery, an optional WebRTC-based P2P layer lets concurrent viewers' browsers share video segments with each other, so a video going viral distributes its own bandwidth demand instead of crushing your server; instance redundancy extends this by letting friendly instances cache each other's videos. Livestreaming is first-class - stream via OBS or any RTMP software, host permanent streams, enable replays, and interact through live chat. Creators get channels, playlists, analytics, built-in video editing (trim, watermark), and an embeddable player for any website. There are no ads, no data mining, and no recommendation algorithm engineered for watch-time - the project's explicit design stance. Admins control federation policy, P2P settings, and theming; a plugin system extends the rest. AGPL-licensed, 300+ contributors, in active development since 2015.

For online classes, telehealth visits, and support calls, OpenVidu Meet is a video meeting app that anyone with a link can join from a browser, with no account or download. A room needs only a name, and an optional wizard adds limits on participants (up to 30) and meeting length (up to a day), plus microphone and camera defaults. A shared Moderator or Speaker link admits anonymous guests, a personal link identifies each invited guest, and registered users sign in with their accounts. Developers can embed a room with an iframe or web component, and webhooks report meeting events to as many endpoints as needed. A smart mosaic favors recent speakers and counts the participants it hides, and a status rail shows the recording light, an encryption badge, and the time left. Moderators mute one participant's microphone, camera, or screen share, switch them off for everyone, remove people, and promote others. Virtual backgrounds blur the room or swap in an image, before joining or mid-call. Recordings start by hand or when the first participant, the second participant, or a moderator joins, in grid, speaker, or single-speaker layout. Permitted members can play, download, delete, or share saved recordings by link. End-to-end encryption protects audio, video, chat, and names behind a shared passphrase, though encrypted rooms cannot be recorded. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Apache-2.0 licensed.

Every screen in the house (browser, TV, game console, or phone) can open the same library of videos, music, and photos once Universal Media Server shares it, with transcoding handled automatically for whichever device asks. A file the device can already play passes through untouched. Anything else is converted on the fly to suit the network, the device, and the preferred language. Folders open at once, with no wait for library scans, and disc drives and disc images play directly. In the web interface, every title gets a page with cover art, cast, and genre details from TMDB, Discogs, and MusicBrainz, and filters narrow the library by actor, director, genre, year, or artist. YouTube channels, online radio, podcasts, and RSS feeds appear beside local files on every connected device. Users and groups, with optional avatars and four-digit PINs, decide which shared folders each person sees; content for children stays apart from the library for adults. A list of detected renderers shows every connected device, and the configuration file of each device can be edited to fix browsing, playback, or transcoding on an unsupported TV. Builds exist for Windows, Linux, and macOS, with AppImage and Docker options for servers. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-2.0 licensed.

Movies, music, and photos stored on your server become a streaming library your television, game console, and phone can browse and play across the home network with Gerbera. Point it at your movie, music, and photo directories and it builds a searchable database, extracting titles, artists, albums, and cover art from the files themselves. The web interface shows the library as a tree of containers and items, where you add directories, edit entries, and reorganise how content is presented to devices. Automatic rescans watch your folders on a timer or through filesystem notifications, so new episodes and albums appear without manual imports. When a device cannot play a format, transcoding plugins convert the stream on the fly into something it accepts. Video files get thumbnails generated automatically, and external URLs can be added as virtual items that renderers play like local media. Different devices see the same library through layouts you define from the extracted metadata, grouped by artist, genre, year, or folder structure. A clients view lists the renderers that connect, and the configuration view edits the server setup from the browser instead of XML files. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPLv2 licensed.

Point Emby at your movie, music, and photo libraries and it becomes a private streaming service: metadata and artwork arrive from TMDB and TVDB, everything lands in a polished browsable interface, and media transcodes on the fly whenever a client can't play the original format. The client reach is the selling point: native apps span Android TV, Apple TV, Google TV, Fire TV, Roku, LG and Samsung smart TVs, iOS, Android, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, plus web browsers and desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and DLNA devices are auto-detected for casting and remote control. Multi-user support gives each household member their own account, watch history, favorites, and recommendations, with genuinely capable parental controls: content restrictions, access schedules, time limits, and live monitoring with remote control of kids' sessions. Live TV works with hardware tuners like HDHomeRun or M3U playlists, with free guide data in the US, Canada, and UK. The server and core features are free; an optional Premiere key adds hardware-accelerated transcoding, DVR recording, offline sync, and Cinema Mode intros.

One Ether install puts the TMDB catalogue inside your TV apps and streams titles on demand from your own accounts, holding no media files at all. It appears as a normal server inside the Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Infuse and Stremio apps your household uses, with the whole catalogue browsable as if it were local. Press Play and Ether resolves the best release across your sources, health checks it, and streams only the byte ranges the player asks for, so scrubbing lands at the right keyframe instead of restarting a download. Pull titles from Real-Debrid, TorBox, AllDebrid and Premiumize accounts, Usenet providers through a built-in Newznab and Torznab manager, Cardigann definitions, or Stremio stream addons pasted in as sources. Released titles need no request queue: each viewer's Plex and Trakt watchlists sync in, and newly playable titles surface in a Now Available row on their home screen. A poster studio renders 4K, Dolby Vision, Atmos and rating badges onto artwork in the browser, and rule-based collections can run as 24/7 virtual channels in the Live TV guide. Subtitles arrive matched and retimed to the cut playing, with skip markers. A self-evicting cache keeps replays instant and preloads the next episode as you watch. Local playback needs no Plex Pass, and Docker runs Ether on port 32400 beside your library rather than replacing it. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-3.0 licensed.

Watch YouTube without the ads, accounts, or tracking, from a server you own: TubeHaus is a private YouTube client that keeps the familiar layout, URLs, and keyboard shortcuts. Your subscriptions, watch history, resume positions, Watch Later, and playlists live as files on the server, so every device in the house shares one library and picks up a video where another screen left it. Live streams play with segments fetched ahead of the player, and captions are transcribed on the fly when a stream has none. Chapters, storyboard previews, a mini player, and theater mode make long videos easy to navigate, while sponsors are skipped automatically and dislike counts come back to the page. Save videos offline in 1080p or 4K for trips, send playback to a TV from your phone without a separate casting dongle, and drive the television interface entirely from a remote. Imports arrive from a Google Takeout export, Invidious, NewPipe, or FreeTube, so years of subscriptions move over in minutes instead of being rebuilt by hand. A calm mode hides recommendations and Shorts when you only want to search and watch deliberately. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Share a game, a film, or your holiday photos with up to 20 friends, and let them watch from a browser tab with nothing to install. The host picks a screen, window, browser tab, or camera, then sends an invite link or a four-digit room code, with an optional room password. Friends open it on a desktop or phone, press Play, and chat or react while it runs, with optional on-screen chat. A microphone switch adds spoken commentary, with a choice of input device and voice volume. Video travels directly between participants where possible, and a self-hosted server can add automatic forwarding for networks that block direct links. Sharing settings cap resolution from 480p to 1440p, frame rate up to 60 fps, and audio at 64, 128, or 192 kbps, with Clarity, Balanced, and Fluency presets and a choice of VP8, H264, or automatic codecs. Viewers get playback controls, picture-in-picture, fullscreen, light and dark themes, and a connection topology view. The interface follows the system language in Chinese or English, with a visual-only mode for a text-free look. Piik App adds native capture on Windows, macOS, and Linux, while a hosted site works from any desktop browser. A self-hosted site can set a site passphrase, a viewer limit per room, and automatic cleanup of empty rooms. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Cap is an open-source screen recorder with a built-in sharing site, so the explanation you would have booked a call for becomes a link someone can watch whenever it suits them. Pick Instant Mode when speed matters: choose a screen, window, or area, add your camera and microphone, and the video uploads while you record, so the share link is ready the second you stop. Pick Studio Mode when polish matters: Cap records locally at up to 4K and 60 frames per second, keeps screen and camera as separate tracks, and opens an editor for trimming, backgrounds, zooms, captions, and export to MP4 or GIF. Whichever mode made it, a shared video lands on a page that plays in any browser, where viewers can leave comments and reactions. Owners can keep a video private or protect it with a password, and team workspaces keep a shared library organized. Share pages come from your own domain, and recordings live in the bundled object store or any S3-compatible bucket. Connect a transcription and AI provider to add transcripts, titles, summaries, and clickable chapters. Bug reports, product demos, onboarding walkthroughs, design reviews, and async standups all shrink to a short recording and a link. The desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux connect to your server through a single Cap Server URL setting. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.