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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Galene is a self-hosted video conferencing system that runs full meetings, lectures, and tutorials in the browser while asking remarkably little of the server it runs on. Every group gets its own page with video tiles, a user list, and a chat pane, and participants join from desktop or mobile browsers with nothing to install. Presenters share a screen or individual windows, stream a video or audio file straight from disk, and switch to blackboard mode when a slide needs resolution more than frame rate. Moderators can warn or remove participants and lock the group, raise-hand status keeps question queues orderly, and anyone can blur their background or exchange files directly with peers. Groups are simple configuration files: set public or private rooms, passwords or login tokens, client limits, and expiry windows, then create users with moderator or presenter privileges using the galenectl command. Automatic subgroups spin up identical breakout rooms on demand, the pattern its author uses to supervise forty students working in pairs during computer science practicals. Calls stay smooth on poor networks because the server adapts video quality per participant, recovers lost packets, and relays media through its built-in TURN server when firewalls block direct paths. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Backed by nearly 30,000 GitHub stars and powering millions of meetings through meet.jit.si, Jitsi Meet is the open-source video conferencing platform that runs entirely in the browser with no plugins or downloads required. The WebRTC-based architecture delivers HD audio and video through the Jitsi Videobridge selective forwarding unit, while Prosody handles XMPP signaling and Jicofo manages conference focus and orechestration. End-to-end encryption uses AES-GCM 128-bit keys exchanged via the Olm protocol, protecting audio, video, and screen sharing through the Insertable Streams API in Chromium-based browsers. Moderators can split participants into breakout rooms with individual password protection, enable lobby waiting rooms for admission control, set meeting passwords, and track speaker statistics with per-participant talk time metrics. Virtual backgrounds leverage TensorFlow.js body segmentation with WebGPU and WebGL acceleration, automatically adapting quality through device tier detection. Server-side recording and YouTube live streaming run through Jibri, while Jigasi provides a SIP gateway for PSTN dial-in and speech-to-text transcription. The platform includes in-meeting chat with private conversations, polls, raise-hand functionality, emoji reactions, and tile and speaker view layouts. Mobile applications for iOS and Android complement the web client, and both web and native SDKs enable embedding video conferences into custom applications. 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.

Apache OpenMeetings puts the whole meeting in the browser: cameras, a shared whiteboard, the agenda document, and recording controls, all running on your own server. Participants join rooms with audio and video, audio only, or video only, choose camera resolutions and devices, and present by sharing a screen or a single window at selectable quality. Moderators control the floor person by person: who may draw on the whiteboard, present, share or record the screen, mute others, or speak while everyone else stays muted. Multiple whiteboards hold drawings, text, clip art, and imported documents in PDF, office, and image formats, rescaling to fit every participant's screen, and boards can be saved into the drag-and-drop file explorer for the next session. Every meeting can be recorded with all audio streams exactly as heard, then downloaded as MP4 or played back in the integrated player, and the built-in calendar schedules rooms and sends invitations. Breakout rooms split classes and workshops into groups, polls gather decisions live, private and group chat runs beside the video, and telephone users can dial into rooms through the Asterisk SIP integration. 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.