head to head · open source
owncast vs praw
owncast has 11,543 GitHub stars, 1,180 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. praw has 4,254 stars, 501 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. owncast leads on adoption by 171% (11,543 vs 4,254 stars). owncast is written in Go under MIT; praw is written in Python under BSD-2-Clause. owncast has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, praw 12%. 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
| owncast | praw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 praw if
- You want the praw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and praw fits your workflow better
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 →
About praw
PRAW is the Python Reddit API Wrapper, a Python package for simple access to Reddit's API. It lives in the Python ecosystem and is classified under community and social networking tooling. The project uses the BSD 2 Clause license and has a sixteen year repository age, with a last push date of 2026 09 14. The repository lists 4254 stars and 500 forks.
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Frequently asked questions
Is owncast or praw more popular?
owncast has 11,543 GitHub stars and praw has 4,254. owncast has the larger community by that measure.
Are owncast and praw free?
Both are open source. owncast is licensed under MIT and praw under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between owncast and praw?
owncast is written in Go and praw in Python. 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 praw?
Choose owncast if you want the larger community (11,543 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose praw if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.