head to head · open source
OBS Studio vs obscura
OBS Studio has 76,421 GitHub stars, 10,245 forks, 1,148 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obscura has 27,406 stars, 2,011 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OBS Studio leads on adoption by 179% (76,421 vs 27,406 stars). OBS Studio is written in C under GPL-2.0; obscura is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. OBS Studio has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, obscura 7%. 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.
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Side by side
| OBS Studio | obscura | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 76K | ★ 27K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OBS Studio if
- You weight community size — 76K 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 is a free, open source C application for capturing, compositing, encoding, recording, and streaming video content, built for streamers, screen recorders, and anyone who needs to produce live or recorded video without paying for a commercial suite.
read the full OBS Studio overview →
About obscura
Obscura is an open source headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript through V8, speaks the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and presents itself as a drop in replacement for headless Chrome when driven by Puppeteer or Playwright. The project lives in the browser automation and headless browser corner of the Rust ecosystem, and it ships under the Apache 2.0 license.
read the full obscura overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OBS Studio or obscura more popular?
OBS Studio has 76,421 GitHub stars and obscura has 27,406. 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 (76,421 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.