Media servers in 2026

Commercial media servers

1. 1
   Plex Plex, Inc.

   Streaming service and media server

   Complete system Production-ready You have a home media library and want polished apps on every device with little setup.

   3.5k readers a month Since 2009 Commercial
2. 2
   Emby Emby LLC

   Emby is a personal media server that organizes and streams your own videos, music, photos, and live TV to your devices.

   Complete system Production-ready You want a self-hosted media server with less dependence on a vendor cloud than Plex, and live TV recording.

   522 readers a month Commercial

New open-source projects

1. 1
   Halcyon Video halcyon-video

   Your Jellyfin or Plex library as a walkable 1990s video rental store, self-hosted

   Complete system Experimental You run Jellyfin or Plex and want a nostalgic, playful way to browse your collection.

   ★ 962 GPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today

Open-source media servers

Complete systems you can adopt 8

1. 1
   Jellyfin jellyfin

   The Free Software Media System - Server Backend & API

   Complete system Production-ready You want Plex or Emby features without accounts, subscriptions or a vendor cloud.

   ★ 59k GPL-2.0 C# Active, pushed 2 days ago
2. 2
   Navidrome navidrome

   🎧 Your Personal Streaming Service

   Complete system Production-ready You own a music library and want Spotify-style access to it from any device.

   ★ 24k GPL-3.0 Go Active, pushed today
3. 3
   Audiobookshelf advplyr

   Self-hosted audiobook and podcast server

   Complete system Production-ready You own audiobook files or follow podcasts and want them streamed to your phone with synced progress.

   ★ 15k GPL-3.0 JavaScript Active, pushed yesterday
4. 4
   Streama streamaserver

   Self hosted streaming media server. https://docs.streama-project.com/

   Complete system Usable You want a simple home video library and prefer it over Jellyfin's breadth.

   ★ 9.8k MIT JavaScript Active, pushed 7 days ago
5. 5
   TubeArchivist tubearchivist

   Your self hosted YouTube media server

   Complete system Usable You want to keep a searchable offline copy of YouTube channels you follow.

   ★ 8.6k GPL-3.0 Python Active, pushed 9 days ago
6. 6
   CloudFlare-ImgBed MarSeventh

   🏖️ A serverless, open-source file hosting solution built on Cloudflare. Supports image hosting, secure file storage, and personal cloud drive capabilities.

   Complete system Usable You want your own image and file hosting for a blog or project on Cloudflare's free tier.

   ★ 6.9k MIT JavaScript Active, pushed today
7. 7
   Seanime 5rahim

   Open-source media server with a web interface and desktop app for anime and manga.

   Complete system Usable You watch anime from your own library and want AniList tracking built in.

   ★ 4.3k GPL-3.0 Go Active, pushed 20 days ago
8. 8
   TubeSync meeb

   Syncs YouTube channels and playlists to a locally hosted media server

   Complete system Usable You want selected YouTube channels to appear automatically in your home media server.

   ★ 2.8k AGPL-3.0 Python Active, pushed today

Building blocks for your own system 2

1. 1
   Node-Media-Server illuspas

   A Node.js implementation of RTMP/HTTP-FLV Media Server

   Building block Usable You need a simple self-hosted RTMP ingest and playback server in a Node.js stack.

   ★ 6.2k Apache-2.0 JavaScript Active, pushed 3 days ago
2. 2
   Nginx-http-flv-module winshining

   A media streaming server based on nginx-rtmp-module. In addtion to the features nginx-rtmp-module provides, HTTP-FLV, GOP cache, VHosts (one IP for multi domain names) and JSON style statistics are supported now.

   Building block Production-ready You run live streaming on nginx and need low-latency HTTP-FLV for web players.

   ★ 2.9k BSD-2-Clause C Active, pushed yesterday

All 30 open-source media server projects

Compared head to head

Looking for an alternative to

Open-source licenses

• Strong copyleft: 11. If you distribute the program or anything built on it, you must release the whole source under the same license.
• Permissive: 11. Use it anywhere, including in closed products. You keep the copyright notice; Apache-2.0 also grants patent rights.
• Network copyleft: 5. Like GPL, and running a changed version as a web service counts as distributing it, so its users get the source too.
• Weak copyleft: 2. Changes to the licensed files must be shared, but you can link them into a closed program.
• Public domain: 1. No conditions at all. You can copy, change and sell the code without even keeping the notice.

Languages

TypeScript 6, Python 5, JavaScript 4, Go 3, C# 2, C 2, Rust 2, Java 1, Shell 1, Vue 1, Nix 1, Elixir 1 and Swift 1.