head to head · open source
owncast vs koala
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars, 1,195 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. koala has 3,574 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. owncast leads on adoption by 226% (11,644 vs 3,574 stars). owncast is written in Go under MIT; koala is written in Ruby under MIT. owncast has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, koala 13%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| owncast | koala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 456 |
| 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 koala if
- You want the koala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and koala 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 koala
Koala ==== Koala is a Facebook library for Ruby, supporting the Graph API (including the batch requests and photo uploads), the Marketing API, the Atlas API, realtime updates, test users, and OAuth validation. We wrote Koala with four goals: Lightweight: Koala should be as light and simple as Facebook’s own libraries, providing API accessors and returning simple JSON. Fast: Koala should, out of the box, be quick. Out of the box, we use Facebook's faster read only servers when possible and if available, the Typhoeus gem to make snappy Facebook requests. Of course, that brings us to our next topic: Flexible: Koala…
read the full koala overview →
More in Community & Social
Related comparisons
More Social Networking projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Social Networking field.
Frequently asked questions
Is owncast or koala more popular?
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars and koala has 3,574. owncast has the larger community by that measure.
Are owncast and koala free?
Both are open source. owncast is licensed under MIT and koala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between owncast and koala?
owncast is written in Go and koala in Ruby. 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 koala?
Choose owncast if you want the larger community (11,644 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.