head to head · open source
cobalt vs srs
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. srs has 29,249 stars, 5,694 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cobalt leads on adoption by 48% (43,316 vs 29,249 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; srs is written in C++ under MIT. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, srs 19%. srs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cobalt | srs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 29K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 5.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick srs if
- You want the srs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and srs fits your workflow better
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
About srs
SRS (Simple Realtime Server) is an open source, AI driven real time media server written in C++ and released under the MIT license. It ingests and republishes live audio and video across a broad set of streaming protocols, including RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, HTTP FLV, HTTP TS, SRT, MPEG DASH, and GB28181. The project runs on Linux and macOS and is built for x86 64, ARMv7, AArch64, Apple M1, RISC V, LoongArch, and MIPS architectures. Codec support covers H.264, H.265, AV1, VP9, AAC, Opus, and G.711. The current line is SRS 8.0, and the project has been developed for roughly eleven years, with documentation published in b…
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or srs more popular?
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars and srs has 29,249. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and srs free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and srs under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and srs?
cobalt is written in Svelte and srs in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cobalt or srs?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,316 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose srs if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.