head to head · open source
streama vs tubearchivist
streama has 9,820 GitHub stars, 978 forks, 352 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. tubearchivist has 8,451 stars, 420 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. streama leads on adoption by 16% (9,820 vs 8,451 stars). streama is written in JavaScript under MIT; tubearchivist is written in Python under GPL-3.0. streama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, tubearchivist 5%. tubearchivist was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (media-server), 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
| streama | tubearchivist | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.8K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-08-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 978 | ⑂ 420 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick streama if
- You weight community size — 9.8K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tubearchivist if
- You want the tubearchivist feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and tubearchivist fits your workflow better
About streama
Streama is a self hosted streaming media server, written in JavaScript and released under the MIT licence, that gives someone with a large personal collection of films and shows a private Netflix style library they run and control themselves.
read the full streama overview →
About tubearchivist
Tube Archivist is a self hosted YouTube media server that downloads videos with yt dlp, indexes them with metadata from YouTube, and serves them back through a searchable web interface, built for people whose personal YouTube archive has grown past the point where folders and filenames still work.
read the full tubearchivist overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is streama or tubearchivist more popular?
streama has 9,820 GitHub stars and tubearchivist has 8,451. streama has the larger community by that measure.
Are streama and tubearchivist free?
Both are open source. streama is licensed under MIT and tubearchivist under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between streama and tubearchivist?
streama is written in JavaScript and tubearchivist 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, streama or tubearchivist?
Choose streama if you want the larger community (9,820 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tubearchivist if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.