head to head · open source
owncast vs talkyard
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars, 1,195 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. talkyard has 1,815 stars, 127 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. owncast leads on adoption by 542% (11,644 vs 1,815 stars). owncast is written in Go under MIT; talkyard is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. owncast has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, talkyard 7%. owncast was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chat), 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 | talkyard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-07-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 127 |
| 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 talkyard if
- You want the talkyard 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 talkyard 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 talkyard
Talkyard ============================= Forum software, with chat, and anonymous comments. Thoughtful discussions.  Insightful comments rise to the top. Upvote ideas.  Sort by votes. Question Answers.  Discuss, select an answer. Chat channels.  Pretty basic features. Blog comments.  Listen to your readers. How does it compare with other software?   Find out here . Self Hosting:   See talkyard prod one Demo:   Discussion forum:   Documentation:   (incomplete) Development:   That's this repo! See: docs/developing talkyard.md Features Good…
read the full talkyard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is owncast or talkyard more popular?
owncast has 11,644 GitHub stars and talkyard has 1,815. owncast has the larger community by that measure.
Are owncast and talkyard free?
Both are open source. owncast is licensed under MIT and talkyard under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between owncast and talkyard?
owncast is written in Go and talkyard 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 talkyard?
Choose owncast if you want the larger community (11,644 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose talkyard if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.