head to head · open source
owncast vs core
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars, 1,195 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. core has 8,837 stars, 2,064 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. owncast leads on adoption by 32% (11,644 vs 8,837 stars). owncast is written in Go under MIT; core is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. owncast has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, core 23%. core 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
| owncast | core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 8.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick owncast if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick core if
- You want the core feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and core fits your workflow better
About owncast
Take control over your content and stream it yourself. Explore the docs » View Demo · FAQ · Report Bug · Report Security Issue Table of Contents 📒 About the Project 🚀 Getting Started 👨💻 Use with your broadcasting software 🛠 Building from source 🚨 Important note about source code and the develop branch 🗄️ Backend ⚛️ Frontend 👏 Contributing 💵 Donors Security 📝 License Contact About The Project Owncast is an open source, self hosted, decentralized, single user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options. It offers complete…
read the full owncast overview →
About core
ownCloud Core ownCloud Core is the server side component of ownCloud Classic, providing file storage, synchronization, and sharing trusted by over 200 million users worldwide. It includes WebDAV, CalDAV, and CardDAV servers, a plugin architecture for apps, user and group management, encryption support, external storage backends, and a comprehensive REST API. The server runs on PHP with support for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite databases. Part of ownCloud Classic This is the main repository for ownCloud Classic. It is the foundation that apps like Activity, Calendar, Contacts, and many others extend. The…
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Frequently asked questions
Is owncast or core more popular?
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars and core has 8,837. owncast has the larger community by that measure.
Are owncast and core free?
Both are open source. owncast is licensed under MIT and core under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between owncast and core?
owncast is written in Go and core in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, owncast or core?
Choose owncast if you want the larger community (11,644 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose core if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.