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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Open-source streaming API from ingest to player

Hi there HN! I'm Matthias and I've been into video streaming for quite a while now. Over the years I've built plenty of small setups, often CLI tools to test and debug streaming video. About a month ago, during my annual holiday, I started working on a simple API on top of my CLI tools. It's time consuming to craft and run multiple ffmpeg jobs, get GOP / keyframes right, merge playlists, package to HLS, ... One thing led to another and I eventually started exploring HLS interstitials, VMAP / VAST and dynamic ad insertion, MSE / EME (HLS.js in general), React (perf) as a player…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Open-source streaming API from ingest to player launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hey HN community! I'm one of the lead devs of this project at fal.ai and we created an open source lightweight video editor powered by the latest media AI models. The main goal was to tackle some challenges when dealing with complex media handling and encoding on the browser. It all started as an internal experiment but as we tackled some of the issues it was clear there could be some value sharing it with the open source community. Some of the key points and tech stack details: - It uses IndexedDb, so all data is local (i.e. no auth, no cloud db) - Multiple AI models for video, image, music…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hi HN! Thanks for your attention to my post. It was a big challenge to run most of Node.js packages in browser, fast moreover. Virtual File system, resolve import/export. I got cold many times, depressions, burned out, yet still alive and finished it. Many guys helped me with an advice. Many users give a lot of positive feedback. There are 200,000 monthly unique users. I work full time now because of the freemium business model. To be honest - I am happy after many years of hard work.

    2022 · playcode.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3IB

    I've been working on an MMORPG that is now in alpha as a solo developer. Here are the major open source technologies that I use: Blender - 3D modeling software for creating the overall environment and every game object. I've gotten a lot of CC and Public Domain assets from https://poly.pizza GLTF - I export assets from blender to the GLTF asset format JSON - I write a JSON config for every game object that describes things like its name, its interactions, its collisions, etc. Node.js exporter - I iterate over the environment and every asset to create a scene hierarchy. I use…

    2024 · alpha.reconquer.online · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hey HN! I've been working on Muxamp for over a year now, and I decided that there's no point in keeping the source closed. (I never planned on making money from it.) I've learned a lot since I started, and I hope others can benefit from its release--and perhaps teach me a thing or two as well :)

    2013 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    I've been building open-source tools in the video/multimedia space for 10+ years. Finally shipped the commercial product I always wanted to exist — Video Commander, a desktop app that consolidates FFmpeg, ffprobe, MediaInfo, VMAF and more into a single workspace where you can inspect, encode and analyze video. Built with Tauri + Rust backend, React frontend. FFmpeg and VMAF. Not a cool AI/LLM project, just a tool I've been heads-down building over the last six months. Happy to answer any questions!

    Apr 2026 · video-commander.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hey there! This is Dan and Ustin (@uzarubin), and we want to share something cool we've been working on for the past year - an open-source `tail -f` for your data, with a UI. We call it "Streamdal" which is a word salad for streaming systems (because we love them) and DAL or data access layer (because we’re nerds). Here's the repo: https://github.com/streamdal/streamdal Here's the site: https://streamdal.com And here's a live demo: https://demo.streamdal.com (github repo has an explanation of the demo) — — — THE PROBLEM We built this because the…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Streamlined Web + BitTorrent player from a VLC developer

    2021 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!

    2025 · bhvr.dev · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    API-driven adaptive streaming, playlists, analytics and more

    2017 · demo.cloudinary.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    List of example projects of how to use oat++ framework - oatpp-examples/Media-Stream at master · oatpp/oatpp-examples

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11SA

    Hey everyone, I'm a young developer with a penchant for music and quality software. I have spent the last 16 months developing an open-source Google Chrome extension which attempts to simplify the experience of using YouTube to play music. Streamus: http://streamus.com/ Streamus currently has 14,000 users and is the #1 trending / #4 ranked 'fun' extension in the web store. I've built it entirely from scratch while teaching myself the basics of BackboneJS (and Backbone.Marionette), RequireJS, GruntJS and many other, smaller libraries. It has been a great learning…

    2014 · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi HF, I'm Terrell, and we built an open-source app that lets developers create their own Operator with a Next.js/React front-end and a flask back-end. The purpose is to simplify spinning up virtual desktops (Xfce, VNC) and automate desktop-based interactions using computer use models like OpenAI’s There are already various cool tools out there that allow you to build your own operator-like experience but they usually only automate web browser actions, or aren’t open sourced/cost a lot to get started. Spongecake allows you to automate desktop-based interactions, and is fully open…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Ladies and gentlemen of a Lisp persuasion, Clojurians and Clojuristas, followers of the paren and everyone else covetously eyeing the greener grass, I made an open-source thing that I would like to share with you. My elevator pitch is that it'll make you forget all about regular print debugging in 10 minutes straight. The slightly longer pitch is this: #>(tag'n'trace any Clojure(-Script) form to `tap>` and Portal with automatic last-input function replay on eval, instant re-render and hassle-free insertion of traced data into the REPL) And before I end up pasting half the README here in bits…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    I spent the past few weeks making an open source cloud code editing environment with an AI copilot and multiplayer collaboration! It's fully self-hostable in 5-10 minutes. There's a lot of minor improvements to be made, and some are already listed in the Github issues. Let me know what you think and feel free to try it out.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    I built an open-source research agent. You ask a question, it searches the web via Tavily, synthesizes an answer with an LLM, and shows the sources it used. Answers stream in real-time. The interesting part is the backend. It's a single JS file (~100 lines) that handles web search, LLM streaming, and per-user conversation history. No vector database, no Redis, no separate storage service. It runs inside a cell — an isolated environment with a built-in database, search index, and filesystem. The cell handles persistence and streaming natively, so the agent code only has to deal with the…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16IW

    TL;DR: https://infstream.com/?code=HN Hi HN – we’re Ben & Callum from Infstream. We’ve always been heavy users of YouTube, for entertainment, education and sharing. Towards the end of last year, we saw more and more horror stories of YouTubers losing their livelihood to the ad algorithm. We decided to build a content-first video platform, which aims to reduce issues by removing advertisers from the equation. Instead, we charge for the content you watch – bold, I know. Instead of paying in advertising and data, users on Infstream build their own streaming package, a channel at…

    2020 · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    The open source, self-hosted alternative to Restream, StreamYard, and vMix. Self-hosted multistream studio. Ingest from any source -- OBS, hardware encoders, mobile, browser -- over RTMP, SRT, or WebRTC (WHIP coming soon). Switch between inputs live in a browser-based production switcher. Fan-out to every platform at once: YouTube, Twitch, Kick, Facebook, or any custom RTMP/RTMPS endpoint. One stream in, or many. Every destination, simultaneously. No cloud middleman, no per-channel fees, no limits.

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hi HN! This is my first game — something I’ve always wanted to do. It’s a small browser game built with Phaser 3, React, and the phaser template (https://github.com/phaserjs/template-react-ts/). I made it in 2 days (like 8 hours in total real time) using gemini-cli. About 90% of the code was generated with AI, but I learned a lot by making fine tweaks. It only works on PC since it’s a typical WASD + R (reload) shooter. I’d love feedback on: - Gameplay (is it fun, too hard?) - Ideas for new features Thanks in advance! ps: I used cubes as a prototype, but now I kind of…

    2025 · cubic-zombies.pages.dev · its alternatives →

  19. 19WV

    Hey everyone, my friend and I created a GitHub Wrapped video for developers to showcase their activity on the platform in a more fun way. The implementation is open-source (https://github.com/rendleyhq/github-wrapped-2024) if you're interested in how it was built. To get a bit geeky, we used masks, keyframe animations, luma key shaders to remove the background from the confetti video, and some other techniques. Also, everything is rendered directly in the browser!! I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the rendering performance, especially if you're running this on your…

    2024 · rendley.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20IH

    Hello HN, I had some christmas free time over the last two weeks (Merry Christmas btw ;-)) and used that time to completely recreate the website of my app[1]. I used all the fancy new tools. I didn't know some of them when I started. What was my goal? * Pretty website * Blazing fast * Mobile first * SSR * Webp support * Generally all the best website practices (high lighthouse score) What did I use? * Tailwindcss (https://tailwindcss.com/) * Tailwind Components (https://tailwindui.com/) * React (https://reactjs.org/) * ViteJs…

    2021 · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hey folks, I am finally posting a Show HN post for a project I have been working on for several months now, and it's in a state where I already get a lot of value myself, so I am happy to share broadly. The pitch line is: "Skybear.NET is a managed platform automating Synthetic HTTP API testing." At the moment, the main source file format supported for your API tests are Hurl.dev files [1]. Hurl is a CLI tool wrapping `curl` and it's really awesome. At least check that out :) I am not affiliated directly with the Hurl CLI tool, and the platform I am building provides full Hurl compatibility.…

    2024 · skybear.net · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Hey HN!! Many of us enjoyed the "If YouTube had actual channels" Show HN post last week. As developers of a similar project, we wanted to share our approach to building a simulated live experience. We’ve spent around 18 months working on this and have managed to add some advanced features, including content-based interactivity. We are super excited to be releasing both the live stream and the code behind it. Our idea was to combine the communal watching experience of television with the modern trappings of the interactive web. If you go to the stream, you will be watching along with everyone…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    A free and open source cross-platform multimedia player

    2014 · videolan.org · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Earlier this year, I took a month to reexamine my coding habits and rethink some past design choices. I hope to rewrite and improve my FOSS libraries this year, and I needed answers to a few questions first. Perhaps some of these questions will resonate with others in the community, too. - Are coroutines viable for high-performance work? - Should I use SIMD intrinsics for clarity or drop to assembly for easier library distribution? - Has hardware caught up with vectorized scatter/gather in AVX-512 & SVE? - How do secure enclaves & pointer tagging differ on Intel, Arm, & AMD? - What's…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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