µStreamer
Lightweight and very quick server to stream MJPEG video from any V4L2 device to the net.
Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.
Commit activity more than 36% of tracked projects; popularity more than 49%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
| Stars | 2k |
|---|---|
| Latest release | — |
| Repo updated | 17 Sept 2026 |
| Licence | GPL-3.0 |
| Built with | C, deb |
Is µStreamer actively maintained?
µStreamer is under active development: 132 commits landed over the last 11 months, averaging roughly 16 commits a month in the most recent quarter.
No tagged releases are published, so there is no stable version to pin to — you would deploy from the default branch or a container image built from it.
µStreamer ranks #11 of 17 tracked media streaming - multimedia streaming projects. Several better-maintained options exist in the same category — they are listed below.
What µStreamer actually does
µStreamer is a lightweight server written in C that streams MJPEG video from Video4Linux2 devices over the network. It provides a straightforward way to expose hardware camera feeds through standard HTTP interfaces without heavy transcoding pipelines.
Best fit: It suits resource-constrained servers or embedded systems where low latency and minimal CPU overhead are priorities for basic video streaming.
Worth knowing: The absence of tagged releases and slowing development activity suggest you may need to rely on the source repository directly, while the MJPEG format itself lacks modern bandwidth efficiency compared to newer streaming codecs.
Deployment notes
As a native C application packaged as a debian binary, it typically runs directly on the host or inside a minimal container, usually requiring a reverse proxy like Nginx to handle TLS termination and external access securely.
Links
Alternatives to µStreamer
Projects in the same categories, ordered by health score.
Multimedia/Entertainment center, formerly known as XBMC. Runs on Android, BSD, Linux, macOS, iOS and Windows.
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.
Ready-to-use, zero-dependency real-time media server and proxy to publish, read, record, playback and route video/audio streams over SRT, WebRTC, RTSP, RTMP, HLS, MPEG-TS, RTP.
Innovative media browser designed for seamless streaming of anime, series and movies, offering advanced features like dynamic transcoding, auto watch history and intelligent metadata retrieval.
A web-based library organizer and player for your adult media stash, with auto-tagging and metadata scraping support.
Personal Music Server, designed for collectors and music maniacs.