StreamYard Pricing (2026): Full Comparison of Plans, Differences, Features & Discounts

Last Updated: July 1, 2026 — All prices and plan details re-verified against StreamYard’s official pricing and current user reports.
By Matt — I’ve personally run shows on the StreamYard Advanced plan since 2024, through the price hike and the plan restructure.

StreamYard pricing in 2026 ranges from $0 to $299/month across five plans: Free, Core ($44.99/mo or $35.99/mo annual), Advanced ($88.99/mo or $68.99/mo annual), Business ($299/mo or $249/mo annual), and custom-priced Enterprise. For most solo podcasters, the Core plan billed annually ($35.99/mo) is the right tier — it removes the watermark, unlocks 1080p output, allows 3-destination multistreaming, and gives you unlimited local recordings. Annual billing saves about 22%. Every paid plan includes a 7-day free trial and a 7-day money-back guarantee on your first charge.

If you’re researching StreamYard right now, you’ve probably already noticed the noise about the price hikes. After the April 2024 Bending Spoons acquisition, StreamYard restructured its plans and raised prices significantly — I’ll cover what that means for you below. But if you just want the bottom line: StreamYard is still the easiest browser-based live streaming and recording tool on the market, and Core remains a fair price for what it does. Watch my full studio walkthrough below before you commit (you can read my review of StreamYard here).

Click here to try StreamYard free for 7 days →

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How I Tested StreamYard (and Why This Breakdown Is Different)

Most StreamYard pricing pages — and there are a lot of them — just reformat the plan chart. I’ve actually run this software. I signed up, put in my card for the trial, answered StreamYard’s setup questions, and was recording inside the studio in well under a minute. Since 2024 I’ve produced shows on the Advanced plan, built reusable scene layouts, downloaded per-guest recordings into my editor, and pushed clips straight to social from inside the platform.

So alongside the verified pricing tables, you’ll get the things only show up when you live in a tool: the quirk where your local recording resizes because StreamYard shares your camera feed, the music-library copyright trap, the per-participant download workflow that saves real editing time, and exactly where the $44.99 jump from free does and doesn’t make sense. That’s the part the aggregator pages can’t give you.

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What Does StreamYard Cost in 2026?

Here’s the full plan comparison verified against StreamYard’s official pricing as of June 2026. Note that StreamYard hides pricing behind a signup wall — this table saves you that step.

Prices re-verified June 7, 2026. Check the official StreamYard pricing page for the latest.

One clarification the other pricing pages get wrong: the 4K on Advanced and Business is for local recording only — StreamYard does not stream 4K to any platform. Your live output tops out at 1080p; the 4K applies to the high-resolution file saved to your device. That distinction matters if you’re choosing Advanced specifically for streaming quality (don’t — choose it for the 4K archive instead).

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Why Did StreamYard Get So Much More Expensive in 2024?

StreamYard was acquired by Italian software conglomerate Bending Spoons in April 2024, and prices increased 80–369% across plans following an August 2024 plan restructure. Existing customers were migrated to new plans on a rolling basis between August 29 and September 28, 2024 — most users saw substantial price increases at their next renewal date with no grandfathering.

This matters because if you used StreamYard a couple of years ago and remember it costing $25/month for the Basic plan, the current $44.99/month Core plan is a real jump. The price hikes are also why you’ll see frustrated reviews on Capterra and G2 from longtime users who say their $96/year plan got “quadrupled” to over $400.

Is StreamYard still worth it after the price hike? For most podcasters and live streamers, yes — but with caveats. The platform still does what no other tool does as cleanly: a browser-based live studio with multistreaming, guest management, scene switching, and AI clip generation in one workflow. If you don’t need those features bundled, you’re better off with cheaper alternatives. If you want them all without stitching together three separate tools, Core’s $35.99/month annual rate is still a fair price. I cover the alternative comparison in detail below.

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StreamYard Free vs. Core vs. Advanced: Which is Best?

StreamYard’s August 2024 restructure consolidated scattered legacy tiers (Essential, Starter, Basic, Professional, Premium, Growth) into five clean plans: Free, Core, Advanced, Business, and Enterprise. The individual plans (Free through Advanced) are explicitly single-user — StreamYard’s plan usage policy prohibits sharing these accounts. If you need multiple seats, you’re looking at Business or Enterprise.

Is the Free Plan Worth Using?

Best for: Anyone who wants to test whether StreamYard’s workflow fits their show before paying anything.

The free plan gives you the full studio interface — banners, live comments, guests, and streaming to one platform. But the tradeoffs are real:

• The StreamYard logo stays locked on your broadcast
• You’re capped at 2 hours of local recording per month
• Video quality is restricted to standard definition (720p)
• You can only have 6 people on screen at once

When I first set up StreamYard, getting into the studio took about three minutes from signup, and starting an actual recording took seconds after that — it’s browser-based, so there’s nothing to download. You enter your card for the trial, answer a few setup questions, land on the dashboard, and pick what you want to do: live stream, on-air webinar, or a plain recording. If you’re coming from OBS and finding the learning curve too steep, the free plan is a low-risk way to see if StreamYard’s simplicity is worth the eventual subscription.

The 2-hour monthly recording cap is the limitation that matters most for podcasters. One weekly episode burns through that immediately. The free plan is for evaluation, not production.

Who Should Pick the Core Plan?

Best for: Solo podcasters and content creators who need professional-quality output without team features.

Cost: $44.99/month or $35.99/month billed annually ($431.88/year — saves about $108 vs. monthly).

Core is where StreamYard becomes a real production tool. The watermark disappears, video quality jumps to 1080p, and you unlock multistreaming to 3 destinations simultaneously. You also get unlimited local recordings, which is the feature that makes Core viable for weekly podcast production.

The features I lean on most are reusable studios and intro/outro support. You build your show layout once — scenes, banners, call-to-action overlays, background music — save it, and drop straight into recording next time without rebuilding anything. I think of it the way I’d plan a live show with a co-host: scene one is the cold open, scene two is the interview, scene three is the screen-share, and you jump between them like cues. In my walkthrough I set a 10-second “starting soon” countdown as the intro, recorded a segment, then triggered a “we’ll be right back” outro and ended the recording — all without leaving the studio. For podcasters who record remotely with guests, Core also lets you invite people into the studio with a simple link — no accounts or downloads on their end — and you can privately message any participant mid-show, which is how I cue guests without the audience hearing.

One real-world quirk to know going in: the first time you record while sharing your webcam, you may notice the recording preview resize itself. That’s because StreamYard is sharing your camera feed with the studio — it’s normal, not a bug, but it surprised me the first time. Small thing, but it’s the kind of detail you only learn by actually recording.

Core also includes AI Clips, which auto-generates short-form clips from your recordings in correct social aspect ratios. You get a full transcript of every recording, which you can copy and turn into a blog post or use for show notes — I’ve literally pasted a StreamYard transcript straight into a Ghost editor draft to start writing. The 50 hours of cloud storage means recordings stay accessible without cluttering your local drive.

For most solo podcasters, Core is the sweet spot. It covers everything you need for a professional video podcast without paying for team features or 4K quality you may never need.

When Does the Advanced Plan Make Sense?

Best for: Multi-camera shows, webinar hosts, and podcasters who want a 4K archive or more than 3 streaming destinations.

Cost: $88.99/month or $68.99/month billed annually ($827.88/year — saves about $240 vs. monthly).

Advanced is the plan I demo in my video, and it’s the one I’d recommend if you’re producing a show that needs to look polished across multiple platforms. The jump from Core gets you 4K local recording, 8 simultaneous streaming destinations (vs. 3), support for an extra camera angle, 15 backstage participants, and downloadable transcripts.

The backstage participant feature is worth highlighting. In a live show or webinar, you can have up to 15 people in a “green room” who aren’t visible to viewers — great for producers, guests waiting to come on, or a technical director managing the broadcast. Combined with 10 on-screen participants, you can run a fairly large production. If you’re doing live streaming as part of your podcast workflow, this matters.

The 4K recording is really about future-proofing your archive — remember, it’s the local file that’s 4K, not your live stream (that maxes at 1080p). Even if you publish at 1080p today, having 4K source files means you can reframe and repurpose footage later. If you’ve invested in a good camera for podcasting, you’ll want a recording platform that doesn’t bottleneck your source quality.

The on-air webinar feature also opens up Advanced for educators, coaches, and consultants running structured events with larger audiences — something Core doesn’t support.

Who Needs the Business Plan?

Best for: Agencies, production teams, and organizations needing multiple seats, priority support, and enterprise-scale storage.

Cost: $299/month or $249/month billed annually ($2,988/year).

Business is everything in Advanced turned up. You get 2–10 seats (so your whole team can access the account), 10 streaming destinations, priority support, 700+ hours of cloud storage, a greenroom feature, and on-air webinars supporting 1,000+ viewers. This is the tier for podcast networks, media companies, and agencies managing multiple shows.

The multi-seat access is the real differentiator. On Core and Advanced, only one person can control the account. On Business, you and a co-host or producer can both log in with separate credentials, set up studios independently, and manage recordings without sharing a single login. If you’re running a podcast setup for two people or more, this saves coordination headaches. There’s also a separate signup requirement: if you sign up with a company email domain, StreamYard requires you to be on the Business plan, not Core or Advanced.

For a deeper look at whether Business is worth the jump from Advanced, check out my full StreamYard overview.

Who Is the Enterprise Plan For?

Best for: Large organizations needing SSO, SLAs, security reviews, and dedicated account management.

StreamYard doesn’t publish Enterprise pricing — you’ll need to contact their sales team for a quote. On top of everything in Business, Enterprise adds multiple Spaces (separate workspaces within one organization), extra user roles for granular permissions, a dedicated support and account manager, SSO (Single Sign-On) for IT compliance, uptime SLAs, and a formal security review process. Built for companies where IT procurement is involved and compliance requirements are non-negotiable.

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Which StreamYard Plan Should You Pick?

Choosing the right tier comes down to three questions: how many platforms do you stream to, do you need team access, and how important is a high-resolution local archive.

If you’re a solo podcaster recording interviews or solo episodes and publishing to one or two platforms, Core is your plan. The 1080p quality, unlimited recordings, and 3-destination multistreaming cover 90% of independent podcasters. Pair it with a solid podcast microphone and decent lighting, and you’ve got a professional setup.

If you’re producing a multi-camera show, running webinars, or streaming to more than 3 platforms, go with Advanced. The 4K local recording, 8 destinations, and backstage participants justify the price bump. This also makes sense if you need transcripts for repurposing your podcast content.

If you have a co-host, producer, or team that needs their own login, Business is the only plan supporting multiple seats. Priority support alone may be worth it for teams that can’t afford downtime during a scheduled live broadcast.

If you’re just exploring — whether you’re considering switching from OBS with a capture card, Zoom, or another platform — start with the free plan or the 7-day trial on Core. You’ll know within one recording session whether StreamYard fits your workflow.

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How Does StreamYard Pricing Compare to Alternatives?

StreamYard isn’t the only option for remote podcast recording and live streaming. Here’s how its pricing stacks against the platforms podcasters compare it to most often.

The quick takeaway: StreamYard costs more than most alternatives at the entry level. At $35.99/month (annual), the Core plan is exactly $16.99/month more than Riverside ($19) and $10.99/month more than Restream Standard ($25). But its browser-based workflow and built-in multistreaming make it significantly easier to use than tools like OBS. If you primarily care about audio recording quality and don’t need live streaming, Squadcast or Riverside might be better fits. If you’re a podcaster who also live streams — or wants to start — StreamYard’s all-in-one approach saves you from stitching together separate tools. See our full roundup of livestreaming platforms for podcasters for a broader comparison.

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What I Like (and Don’t Like) About StreamYard After Two Years

After producing shows on the Advanced plan since 2024 — through the price hike and the August 2024 plan restructure — here’s where StreamYard earns its price and where it falls short.

The setup is absurdly fast. You sign up, enter payment info for the trial, answer a few questions, and you’re in the studio. Going from “Create Recording” to live on camera takes maybe 30 seconds. Contrast that with OBS, which has a steep learning curve and requires configuring sources, scenes, and encoding settings before you can do anything. If you’ve ever wrestled with OBS encoding overload errors or OBS high CPU usage, StreamYard offloads all that to the cloud.

Scene management is a real production tool. You can plan an entire show as a sequence of scenes — intro countdown, solo talking-head, side-by-side interview, screen-share — and jump between them during recording. This used to require dedicated switching hardware or complex OBS scene collections. If you’re using a live streaming equipment setup, StreamYard can replace most of the software layer.

Per-guest downloads are the underrated feature. After a recording with multiple people, StreamYard lets you download each participant’s local track separately, not just the combined output. So if I have several guests on, I can pull everyone’s individual files, export them, and drop them straight into my editor — or just edit inside StreamYard, which also spits out a transcript and lets you cut social clips in the right aspect ratio. Going from recording to a published reel without opening another app is a genuine time-saver for repurposing content.

The music library is a nice bonus with a real catch. StreamYard includes built-in background and intro music — lo-fi beats, waiting-room loops you can drop under your countdown. It’s convenient, but read the warning they put right in front of you: don’t upload copyrighted tracks. Load up a commercial song and you’ll get flagged on the platforms you stream to. If you need royalty-free music for your podcast, source it separately so you own the license outright.

What I don’t love: StreamYard hides their pricing page behind a wall, which is frustrating for comparison shoppers (it’s the whole reason this page exists). The jump from free to $44.99/month is steep — there’s no $15–20 tier for creators who just need watermark removal and 720p multistreaming. The post-acquisition price increases were aggressive, and the way longtime customers were migrated without grandfathering rubbed a lot of users the wrong way (justifiably). Some Capterra users have reported issues with local recordings disappearing or audio cutting out after the August 2024 restructure. I haven’t experienced these problems personally, but they’re worth knowing if you rely heavily on local recordings as your primary file source — keep a separate backup workflow regardless.

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StreamYard Pricing FAQs

How much does StreamYard cost per month?

StreamYard’s paid plans start at $44.99/month for Core and go up to $299/month for Business. With annual billing, Core drops to $35.99/month and Advanced drops to $68.99/month — a 22% savings. The free plan costs nothing but includes StreamYard branding and a 2-hour monthly recording cap.

How much does StreamYard cost per year?

On annual billing, Core costs $431.88/year, Advanced costs $827.88/year, and Business costs $2,988/year. Monthly billing is more expensive: $539.88/year for Core, $1,067.88/year for Advanced, and $3,588/year for Business. Annual billing saves roughly 22% across all individual plans.

Why did StreamYard get more expensive?

StreamYard was acquired by Bending Spoons in April 2024, and prices increased 80–369% across plans following an August 2024 plan restructure. Existing customers were migrated to new plans between August 29 and September 28, 2024 with no grandfathering. The legacy Essential, Starter, Basic, Professional, Premium, and Growth plans were all discontinued and replaced by Free, Core, Advanced, Business, and Enterprise.

Is StreamYard free forever?

Yes, the free plan is genuinely free with no time limit and no credit card required. You can use it indefinitely, but you’ll have the StreamYard logo on broadcasts, recording is capped at 2 hours/month, and video quality is limited to standard definition.

Does StreamYard stream in 4K?

No. StreamYard’s live stream output maxes out at 1080p on every plan. The 4K offered on the Advanced and Business plans applies only to the local recording saved to your device — not to what your viewers see live. Choose Advanced for a high-resolution archive, not for higher streaming quality.

Does StreamYard offer a free trial or money-back guarantee?

Both. StreamYard offers a 7-day free trial on Core and Advanced plans (payment info required, cancel anytime before trial ends). They also offer a 7-day money-back guarantee that applies only to your first charge — after 7 days post-purchase, the charge is final and non-refundable.

Are there any hidden fees with StreamYard?

The main one is storage overage: $4.99/month per 100 additional hours of cloud storage beyond your plan’s allocation. Streaming hours are unlimited on all paid plans, so there are no overage fees for stream duration. The other “hidden cost” is the post-Bending Spoons price increase pattern — existing users have reported renewal price jumps without prior warning.

Can you use StreamYard for podcast recording without live streaming?

Yes. When starting a session, choose “Recording” instead of “Live Stream” — same studio interface, scene management, and guest capabilities without broadcasting. Many podcasters use StreamYard purely as a remote recording platform without ever streaming live.

What’s the difference between Core and Advanced?

Three biggest differences: local recording quality (1080p vs. 4K), streaming destinations (3 vs. 8), and backstage participants (none vs. 15). Advanced also adds on-air webinar support, downloadable transcripts, custom fonts, and an extra camera angle. For most solo podcasters, Core covers everything. Advanced makes sense for larger productions or a 4K archive.

Is StreamYard better than Riverside for podcasting?

They serve different needs. StreamYard is stronger for live streaming and multiplatform broadcasting, while Riverside focuses on studio-quality local recording with separate audio and video tracks per participant. If your show is primarily live or you want to simulcast, StreamYard wins. If you only record and want the highest possible audio quality, Riverside may be a better fit.

Is StreamYard better than OBS?

StreamYard is far easier to use — recording within minutes of signup, zero software install. OBS is free and infinitely customizable, but the learning curve is significant. If you want plug-and-play simplicity with multistreaming built in, StreamYard wins. If you want granular control over every encoding setting, OBS is hard to beat on flexibility.

What happens when you cancel StreamYard?

Your account reverts to the free tier at the end of your billing cycle. You keep access to recordings you’ve downloaded, but cloud-stored recordings beyond the free tier’s storage limit may become inaccessible. StreamYard doesn’t delete your account — you can upgrade again later.

Can you share a StreamYard account with a co-host?

Not on individual plans. Core and Advanced are explicitly single-user under StreamYard’s plan usage policy. If you need multiple people to manage the account, you’ll need Business, which includes 2–10 seats. Your co-host can still join any session as a guest on any plan — they just can’t log in and manage the account.

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Related StreamYard & Recording Guides

If you’re evaluating StreamYard, these guides will help you make a more informed decision:

• StreamYard vs Riverside — Full Comparison
• StreamYard vs OBS — Which Should You Use?
• Restream vs StreamYard — Multistreaming Compared
• What Is StreamYard? Full Walkthrough
• Best Remote Podcast Recording Software
• Livestreaming Platforms for Podcasters
• Best Video Podcast Platforms
• Best Cameras for Podcasting
• Complete Podcast Equipment Guide
• How Much Does It Cost to Start a Podcast?

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Final Verdict: Is StreamYard Worth the Price in 2026?

StreamYard isn’t the cheapest option in the remote recording and streaming space — and the post-Bending Spoons price increases have made the gap wider. But it’s still the easiest browser-based platform to use. The workflow means zero software to install, zero drivers to troubleshoot, and zero encoding headaches. For podcasters who want to record interviews, stream live shows, or do both — and don’t want to spend hours learning OBS — Core at $35.99/month (annual) remains one of the better values in the all-in-one space.

If you’re still unsure, start with the free plan or the 7-day trial on Core. You’ll know within one recording session whether StreamYard fits your workflow. And if it doesn’t, my full guide to livestreaming platforms for podcasters covers every alternative worth considering.

Click here to try StreamYard free for 7 days →