head to head · open source
cobalt vs srs
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars, 4,031 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. srs has 29,414 stars, 5,708 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 55% (45,722 vs 29,414 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; srs is written in C++ under MIT. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, srs 19%. srs 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
| cobalt | srs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 29K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 5.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick srs if
- You want the srs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and srs fits your workflow better
About cobalt
best way to save what you love cobalt.tools 💬 community discord server 🐦 twitter 🦋 bluesky cobalt is a media downloader that doesn't piss you off. it's friendly, efficient, and doesn't have ads, trackers, paywalls or other nonsense. paste the link, get the file, move on. that simple, just how it should be. cobalt monorepo this monorepo includes source code for api, frontend, and related packages: api tree & readme web tree & readme packages tree it also includes documentation in the docs tree: how to run a cobalt instance how to protect a cobalt instance cobalt api instance environment variables cobalt api…
read the full cobalt overview →
About srs
SRS(Simple Realtime Server) SRS/8.0 (Free) is a simple, high performance, AI driven real time media server. It supports RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, HTTP FLV, SRT, MPEG DASH, and GB28181 on Linux and macOS across x86 64, ARMv7, AArch64, Apple M1, RISC V, LoongArch, and MIPS architectures. Supported codecs include H.264, H.265, AV1, VP9, AAC, Opus, and G.711. See the complete list of features. Note: For more details on the single node architecture for SRS, please visit the following link. SRS is licenced under MIT, and some third party libraries are distributed under their licenses. Usage Please check the Getting Started…
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or srs more popular?
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars and srs has 29,414. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and srs free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and srs under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and srs?
cobalt is written in Svelte and srs in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cobalt or srs?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (45,722 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose srs if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.