Owncast

What is it?

Owncast turns any computer into your personal live streaming station. You get a web page where people watch your stream and chat in real time — the same experience as a Twitch channel, except it’s entirely yours. You broadcast from OBS or any standard streaming software, exactly like streamers already do.

It’s famously lightweight: it runs happily on a cheap rented server, a home computer, even a Raspberry Pi. There’s a simple admin page to manage your stream key, see who’s watching, and moderate chat.

What does it replace?

Twitch and paid streaming tools like StreamYard (from $20/month). Platforms take a cut of your earnings, own the relationship with your audience, and can suspend or demonetize you overnight based on an automated decision. Owncast has no algorithm, no terms-of-service roulette, and no one between you and your viewers.

What does it cost you?

Nothing. Unlimited streams, unlimited viewers (limited only by your internet connection), no revenue cut. Your channel, your chat, your rules.

Get it running

Copy the text below, paste it into Claude (or Claude Code), and let it do the setup — it’s one of the easiest installations on this site. If you already use OBS, you’ll be live in about ten minutes.

Set up a self-hosted Owncast live streaming server on this machine.

1. Install Owncast the official way (https://owncast.online/docs): either run the one-line installer script for the standalone binary, or use Docker with `docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -p 1935:1935 --name owncast owncast/owncast:latest` — prefer Docker if it's available here.
2. Verify the service is up: the public page should load at http://localhost:8080 and the admin dashboard at http://localhost:8080/admin (default stream key/admin password is abc123 — change it immediately and show me how).
3. Walk me through connecting OBS: server rtmp://<this-machine>:1935/live with the stream key, and recommend sane bitrate/encoder settings for this machine's hardware.
4. Do a short local test stream and confirm playback and chat work in the browser.
5. When I'm ready to go public, set up TLS and open/forward ports 8080 and 1935.