Self-hosted alternatives to Netflix
Catalogues shrink every year and prices rise — a personal library never gets removed.
Below are 10 open-source projects that cover the same ground, each scored 0–100 on how actively it is actually maintained — commit volume, release cadence and recent trend. 7 of the 10 are currently rated healthy or better. Ordering reflects that score, not sponsorship.
| Project | Health | Activity (11 mo) | Stars | Licence | Last release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jellyfin Media server for audio, video, books, comics, and photos with a sleek interface and robust transcoding capabil | Thriving · 92 | 58k | GPL-2.0 | 15 Sept 2026 | |
| Owncast Decentralized single-user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in st | Thriving · 90 | 12k | MIT | 3 Sept 2026 | |
| PeerTube Decentralized video streaming platform using P2P (BitTorrent) directly in the web browser. | Thriving · 89 | 15k | AGPL-3.0 | 15 Sept 2026 | |
| Invidious Alternative YouTube front-end. | Healthy · 76 | 25k | AGPL-3.0 | 5 Aug 2026 | |
| SRS A simple, high efficiency and real-time video server, supports RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, HTTP-FLV and SRT. | Healthy · 74 | 29k | MIT | 24 Sept 2026 | |
| Tube Archivist Organize, search, and enjoy your YouTube collection. Subscribe, download, and track viewed content with metada | Healthy · 70 | 8.5k | GPL-3.0 | 25 Aug 2026 | |
| OvenMediaEngine Streaming Server with Sub-Second Latency. | Healthy · 69 | 3.3k | AGPL-3.0 | 13 Aug 2026 | |
| MediaCMS Modern, fully featured open source video and media CMS, written in Python/Django/React, featuring a REST API. | Steady · 57 | 5.1k | AGPL-3.0 | 25 Aug 2026 | |
| Plex Centralized home media playback system with a powerful central server. | Unrated | — | ⊘ Proprietary | — | |
| Emby Home media server supporting both DLNA and DIAL (Chromecast) devices out-of-the-box. | Unrated | — | ⊘ Proprietary | — |
How these were picked
Every project listed here is open source and can run entirely on hardware you control. We start from the categories that match Netflix's job — Media Streaming - Video Streaming, Media Streaming - Multimedia Streaming — then rank by health score so that a popular-but-abandoned project never appears above a smaller one that is actively shipping. The scoring method is documented in full.
The scores are recomputed from repository data on every rebuild, so this page reflects the state of these projects as of 1 Oct 2026 — not the day it was written.
Jellyfin
Media server for audio, video, books, comics, and photos with a sleek interface and robust transcoding capabilities. Almost all modern platforms have clients, including Roku, Android TV, iOS, and Kodi.
Best fit: Users who want to centralise their personal media collections and stream them across multiple devices without relying on third-party cloud services.
Worth knowing: Transcoding high-bitrate media files can demand significant CPU or GPU resources from your host server depending on the client compatibility.
Owncast
Decentralized single-user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options.
Best fit: This tool suits individual creators who want total control over their video broadcasting infrastructure without relying on hosted third-party services.
Worth knowing: Running your own video streaming server demands significant network bandwidth and compute resources, particularly when handling multiple concurrent viewers.
PeerTube
Decentralized video streaming platform using P2P (BitTorrent) directly in the web browser.
Best fit: Self-hosters who want to build an independent video platform or participate in a decentralised media network without relying on centralised corporate infrastructure.
Worth knowing: The peer-to-peer playback model relies on active viewers sharing data, meaning videos with low initial viewership will place higher bandwidth demands directly on your server.
Invidious
Alternative YouTube front-end.
Best fit: This is a good fit if you want to stream online videos through a minimal interface that prioritises lightweight access and avoids proprietary client runtimes.
Worth knowing: Alternative front-ends for large video platforms frequently break when upstream APIs change, requiring regular updates and maintenance to remain functional.
SRS
A simple, high efficiency and real-time video server, supports RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, HTTP-FLV and SRT.
Best fit: Self-hosters who need to ingest and redistribute live video streams with low latency using standard streaming protocols.
Worth knowing: Streaming servers can consume significant CPU and network bandwidth depending on the number of concurrent streams and transcoding requirements, which may lead to high resource usage.