head to head · open source
glance vs owncast
glance has 37,086 GitHub stars, 1,463 forks, 318 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. owncast has 11,535 stars, 1,177 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. glance leads on adoption by 222% (37,086 vs 11,535 stars). glance is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; owncast is written in Go under MIT. glance has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, owncast 10%. owncast 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
| glance | owncast | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-05 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick glance if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick owncast if
- You want the owncast feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and owncast fits your workflow better
About glance
Glance is a self hosted dashboard application written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It gathers feeds and status information from many sources into a single customizable page, so that a user can read news, follow channels and watch server health from one interface instead of opening a separate tab or application for each source. It lives in the self hosted and homelab ecosystem, alongside other Docker packaged services that users run on their own hardware. The project has been on GitHub for about two years, holds roughly 37,000 stars and 1,454 forks, and its topic list places it among aggregators,…
read the full glance overview →
About owncast
Owncast is an open source, self hosted, single user live video streaming and chat server written in Go, with a React frontend, released under the MIT license. It positions itself as a way to run your own live streams in a style similar to the large mainstream streaming services, while keeping complete ownership over your content, interface, moderation, and audience. The project lives in the fediverse: its topic list covers ActivityPub, federation, and decentralized networking, placing it alongside other federated social software rather than inside a proprietary platform.
read the full owncast overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is glance or owncast more popular?
glance has 37,086 GitHub stars and owncast has 11,535. glance has the larger community by that measure.
Are glance and owncast free?
Both are open source. glance is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and owncast under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between glance and owncast?
glance is written in Go and owncast in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, glance or owncast?
Choose glance if you want the larger community (37,086 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose owncast if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.