OBS Studio review 2026: features, plugin ecosystem, and pricing (it's free) for the world's most popular open-source streaming and recording software.
OBS Studio is free, open-source software for video recording and live streaming, maintained by the OBS Project community rather than a commercial company. It began in August 2012 as a single-developer project by Hugh 'Jim' Bailey and was rewritten as a cross-platform application in 2013-2014, growing into the most widely used streaming software for platforms like Twitch and YouTube.
The software runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and is funded entirely through community donations via Open Collective and Patreon rather than subscriptions or licensing fees. It receives regular updates from a global base of volunteer contributors and maintains an open plugin API that has spawned a large third-party plugin ecosystem.
OBS Studio's scene composition system lets users build unlimited scenes combining game captures, webcam feeds, browser sources, images, and text overlays, switching between them with customizable transitions during a live broadcast or recording. Its advanced audio mixer provides per-source noise suppression, noise gates, and gain controls, with support for professional VST audio plugins.
Streaming output supports RTMP, HLS, SRT, and WebRTC protocols to platforms including Twitch, YouTube, and custom RTMP servers, while recordings can be saved independently of the stream in MKV, MP4, MOV, FLV, or TS formats. A built-in virtual camera feature lets OBS scenes be used as a webcam source inside video conferencing apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and the plugin API supports a large ecosystem of third-party plugins for multi-platform output, automatic scene switching, and source-specific recording.
OBS Studio is completely free with no paid tiers, licenses, or feature paywalls of any kind. All core functionality, including scene composition, the audio mixer, and streaming and recording output, is available to every user at no cost.
The OBS Project sustains development through voluntary donations via Open Collective and Patreon rather than selling the software, and third-party plugins in its ecosystem are separately licensed by their individual developers, with most also offered free of charge.
Yes, OBS Studio is completely free and open source with no paid tiers, watermarks, or feature restrictions; the project is funded through optional donations.
OBS Studio began in 2012 as Open Broadcaster Software, created by developer Hugh 'Jim' Bailey, and was rewritten as the cross-platform OBS Studio in 2013-2014 by the OBS Project community.
OBS Studio runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Yes, OBS Studio includes a built-in virtual camera feature that lets any scene be used as a webcam source in video conferencing apps.
Streamlabs is a separate, commercially backed application built on top of OBS Studio's open-source code, adding hosted alerts, themes, and cloud features, while OBS Studio itself remains free, community-maintained, and vendor-neutral.
Yes, OBS Studio exposes a plugin API used by a large third-party ecosystem covering multi-platform streaming, automatic scene switching, and per-source recording.
OBS Studio supports RTMP, HLS, SRT, and WebRTC for streaming output, alongside MKV, MP4, MOV, FLV, and TS for local recording.