No. Anyone with your room link can join, chat, and be on camera without signing up for anything. Only hosting — creating a studio and going live — requires a Streamboth account.
Chrome or Edge give you the full feature set, including live captions (which rely on Chrome's built-in speech recognition). Camera and microphone access need a real browser with device permissions — it won't work in an embedded/in-app browser.
No. Everything — the video mixing, layouts, branding, recording, and streaming — runs in the browser tab itself. There's nothing to download.
Streamboth connects everyone directly to each other (no cloud media server in between), which works great for a handful of guests in one room. It isn't built to scale to dozens of simultaneous participants.
Yes — your RTMP URL and stream key are only ever sent from your browser to your own account's server process, which is what actually connects to YouTube/Twitch/Facebook. They're never sent or stored anywhere else.
Yes, local recording is completely independent of Go Live — record straight to a file on your machine, pause and resume as needed, with no live destination required at all.
Hosting duties automatically hand off to a co-host, or another participant if there's no co-host. Because compositing happens in the browser, we'd still recommend keeping whoever's actually producing the show's tab open and focused for the full broadcast or recording.
Yes — the Destination tab accepts any custom RTMP URL and stream key, not just the built-in YouTube/Twitch/Facebook presets.
Streamboth runs entirely in your browser, which can't speak NDI directly. The workaround: install the free NDI Virtual Input tool, point it at your NDI source, and it'll show up in Streamboth's camera list like any other webcam — no code, no plugin needed on our end.
Yes for guests — they can join from a phone browser and be on camera. The studio also fits a phone screen for hosts, but producing a show — layouts, graphics, Cut, Destinations — is easiest on a laptop or desktop.
Yes. In the studio, open Brand → Lyrics, paste a song's words, and step through them as a lower third or full screen — over a frosted picture, aurora light, your own picture or a looping video. Songs are saved to your account, and the credit line is there for writers and your licence number.
Yes, on Pro, Business and Apex. Add a PDF or a PowerPoint file (.pptx, .ppt or .odp) in the studio's Media tab and it becomes slides. A PowerPoint file is turned into a PDF on our server and not kept. Then step through the slides step through them with the arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down (what a presentation clicker sends), the buttons on its card, or the phone remote. A PDF stays on your computer — it's never uploaded.
The Free plan shows the Streamboth logo in the top-right corner of your stream and recordings. Pro, Business and Apex have no logo.
Every layout and Scene Builder, video up to 720p, one destination at a time, and 120 stream minutes a month — recording doesn't use stream minutes and is unlimited. You get one design each of lower thirds, caption styles, filters and lyrics looks, and a small Streamboth logo shows on your stream. Pro adds 1080p, three destinations, unlimited minutes, four designs of each, the subscribe, like, comment and share overlays, and no logo. Business adds five destinations, every design, extra cameras, co-hosts and 50 hours of cloud storage for your recordings, and Apex adds 4K, 150 hours of cloud storage (4K recordings count 2.5 times their length) and AnnanAI live captions (10 hours a month included, then $2 an hour) — on both, 20 hours more is $14.99 for a year whenever you need it. Pro and up also bring your YouTube and Facebook comments into the studio and can scroll them on screen, and add the sound board, slides from a PDF, an on-screen QR code, translated captions and YouTube chapters after each show; Business and Apex add the auto-director, teleprompter and phone remote. Marking moments, the show recap, Undo and Redo, the speaker timer, voice commands and controllers are on every plan; Focus mode and the choice of Program only or Preview + Program come with Business and Apex. Pro and up also add the AI show summary, instant replay, thumbnails, scheduled YouTube shows and PowerPoint slides; Business and Apex add vertical clips, smart framing, presenter mode and viewer call-ins.
"Live" in Streamboth means the relay to that platform started — it's a good sign, but it doesn't guarantee the platform has accepted and is showing the stream yet. We'd recommend testing against an unlisted/private stream first before going live for real.