head to head · open source
owncast vs misskey
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars, 1,195 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. misskey has 11,368 stars, 1,641 forks, 2,535 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. owncast leads on adoption by 2% (11,644 vs 11,368 stars). owncast is written in Go under MIT; misskey is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. owncast has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, misskey 14%. misskey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (activitypub, federation, fediverse), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | misskey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 misskey if
- You want the misskey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and misskey 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 misskey
🌎 Misskey is an open source, federated social media platform that's free forever! 🚀 Learn more Thanks Thanks to Sentry for providing the error tracking platform that helps us catch unexpected errors. Thanks to Chromatic for providing the visual testing platform that helps us review UI changes and catch visual regressions. Thanks to Codecov for providing the code coverage platform that helps us improve our test coverage. Thanks to Crowdin for providing the localization platform that helps us translate Misskey into many languages. Thanks to Docker for providing the container platform that helps us run Misskey in…
read the full misskey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is owncast or misskey more popular?
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars and misskey has 11,368. owncast has the larger community by that measure.
Are owncast and misskey free?
Both are open source. owncast is licensed under MIT and misskey under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between owncast and misskey?
owncast is written in Go and misskey in TypeScript. 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 misskey?
Choose owncast if you want the larger community (11,644 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose misskey if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.