head to head · open source
OBS Studio vs obscura
OBS Studio has 78,917 GitHub stars, 11,050 forks, 1,148 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. obscura has 30,307 stars, 2,291 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OBS Studio leads on adoption by 160% (78,917 vs 30,307 stars). OBS Studio is written in C under GPL-2.0; obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. OBS Studio has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, obscura 8%. obscura 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| OBS Studio | obscura | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 30K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OBS Studio if
- You weight community size — 79K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick obscura if
- You want the obscura feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and obscura fits your workflow better
About OBS Studio
OBS Studio =================================== .. image:: :alt: OBS Studio Build Status GitHub Actions :target: .. image:: :alt: OBS Studio Translation Project Progress :target: .. image:: :alt: OBS Studio Discord Server :target: What is OBS Studio? OBS Studio is software designed for capturing, compositing, encoding, recording, and streaming video content, efficiently. It's distributed under the GNU General Public License v2 (or any later version) see the accompanying COPYING file for more details. Quick Links Website: Help/Documentation/Guides: Forums: Build Instructions: Developer/API Documentation…
read the full OBS Studio overview →
About obscura
Obscura The open source headless browser for AI agents and web scraping. Lightweight, stealthy, and built in Rust. Native rendering is here. No Chromium required. 🎉 Capture screenshots, screencast live pages, and export PDFs directly with Obscura. Obscura is a headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript via V8, supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and acts as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome with Puppeteer and Playwright. Why Obscura over headless Chrome? Obscura inspired Cloudflare Kitesurf’s first prototype Cloudflare began by…
read the full obscura overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Screen Capture & Recording projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Screen Capture & Recording field.
Frequently asked questions
Is OBS Studio or obscura more popular?
OBS Studio has 78,917 GitHub stars and obscura has 30,307. OBS Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are OBS Studio and obscura free?
Both are open source. OBS Studio is licensed under GPL-2.0 and obscura under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OBS Studio and obscura?
OBS Studio is written in C and obscura in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, OBS Studio or obscura?
Choose OBS Studio if you want the larger community (78,917 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose obscura if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.