StreamYard Pricing: What Each Plan Costs and Covers

StreamYard pricing starts at $0, with Essential at $18.99 a month, Core at $44.99 and Advanced at $88.99 on monthly billing. Core is the clearest starting point for a branded show that also needs recordings; companies and church media teams should confirm Business eligibility and pricing before budgeting around those individual rates.

StreamYard is a browser-based studio for producing live shows and recordings. The right subscription depends on who is using it, where the show goes and what you need to keep afterward.

Verified against StreamYard's pricing page, November 2026, on November 14. This comparison uses public pricing and help pages, not a signed-in trial. Account-specific offers and renewal prices can differ.

StreamYard pricing at a glance

Essential buys more streaming; Core adds the branding and recording package; Advanced adds broader distribution and webinar features. The current pricing page labels those paid tiers for individuals only.

Prices below are in USD. Annual totals are calculated as the displayed yearly monthly rate multiplied by 12.

The public pages reviewed did not expose a universal Business monthly or annual price. A number copied from an older plan is not a usable company budget.

StreamYard free plan: useful for casual live shows

Free can be enough for an individual who streams occasionally, accepts the StreamYard logo and does not need downloadable recordings. It supports 6 people on screen and lists 1 account seat. A seat is account access for an operator, not a guest appearing in the show.

The Free feature limits specify no multistreaming, so you broadcast to one destination at a time. There are no custom overlays or backgrounds, custom RTMP destinations, pre-recorded live streams or recording downloads. Live broadcasts are not automatically recorded in StreamYard.

Free includes 2 hours of local recording per month and 5 hours of recording storage. Those are different limits: local recording captures participants on their own devices; storage measures how much saved material remains in your library. The Free local allowance applies to recording sessions, not live broadcasts. Recordings more than 12 months old are removed.

Do not assume a universal monthly streaming allowance. StreamYard's Free streaming-hours guidance tells users to check Billing > Streaming and recording hours. It resets at the start of each month. Reaching it prevents a new broadcast; an already-running broadcast is not interrupted.

For a casual personal Q&A, Free may remain sufficient indefinitely. For a podcast whose deliverable is an editable download, the absence of downloads is the deciding limitation, even before you count recording hours.

What each paid plan changes

Essential: streaming reach without the Core production package

Essential is the economical step up when streaming time is your problem. Its card adds unlimited streaming, simultaneous broadcasting to 2 destinations and Full HD 1080p to the Free features.

The card does not add logo removal or increase the inherited 6-person on-screen allowance. It also does not separately state an Essential storage allowance or seat count. Confirm those in your offer if they matter.

There is a documentation mismatch around recording: the general local-recording help page says all paid plans have unlimited local recording, while the current pricing cards explicitly introduce that benefit under Core. Essential's card does not resolve it. If dependable live-stream recordings and exports are requirements, budget for Core unless StreamYard confirms your Essential offer includes them.

Core: the practical tier for a branded recorded show

Core is the first current card that explicitly removes the StreamYard logo and records live broadcasts. It includes unlimited local recording, cloud recording, 50 hours of permanent storage, 10 on-screen participants and 3 simultaneous destinations.

It adds your own logos, overlays, backgrounds and video clips; intro and outro video; AI clips and AI backgrounds; a custom referral message; more custom layouts; Chat Overlay; and thumbnails without a watermark. The card specifies 16 additional custom layouts.

Core also includes guest destinations and custom RTMP, the connection method for sending a stream to a compatible service beyond the built-in destinations. Pre-recorded streams can run up to 2 hours.

For an independent interview show, this is where the package becomes useful as both a live production tool and a source of files for later editing. The limitation to watch is retained storage, not just monthly recording volume.

Advanced: pay for a named requirement

Advanced earns its premium when you need more destinations, 4K local files or On-Air webinars. It includes Core's features and raises simultaneous destinations to 8, allows an extra camera and supports 15 backstage participants.

Backstage capacity is not the same as people visible on screen. Advanced inherits Core's 10-person on-screen allowance; the 15-person figure is backstage.

Advanced also adds 4K, or 2160p, local recordings, pre-recorded streams up to 4 hours, custom fonts, downloadable transcripts and On-Air webinars for 100 viewers. The 4K claim concerns locally recorded files, not a promise of 4K live output.

Moving from Core costs another $44 per month on monthly billing, or $33 per month on the annual equivalent. Do not buy Advanced merely to keep more recordings: both plans include 50 hours of storage.

Business pricing starts with eligibility

A company should establish its Business offer before comparing individual prices. The Plan Usage Policy distinguishes individual use, including freelancers and their collaborators, from use by small businesses and organizations.

The pricing page supplies only Free's explicit seat count. The policy says available seats can vary between users. Do not turn “10 on-screen participants” into “10 team accounts,” or assume a co-host needs a paid operator seat simply to appear as a guest.

The Business product page advertises 10 multistream destinations, 15 backstage participants, a greenroom for up to 25 guests, 10 concurrent streams and recording up to 24 hours per stream. It also describes custom branding, high-definition streaming and organization controls.

The standard Business subscription includes 2 seats, according to the maker's Business update. Extra seats are priced inside the account. The storage help page lists 700+ hours for Business. The public pages reviewed did not establish a universal base webinar-viewer allowance or a separate Business on-screen participant limit.

Get the exact package in writing. In particular, the usage policy identifies single sign-on, workspaces including the admin role, and extra On-Air attendees as add-ons. A capability shown on the Business marketing page is not proof that every base subscription includes it.

For a church media team, ask for the nonprofit offer and the operator access you need. A low-volume Sunday schedule does not by itself establish eligibility for an individual subscription.

StreamYard price: monthly flexibility versus annual commitment

Annual billing becomes cheaper at the tenth paid month for each published individual tier, assuming the displayed rates remain unchanged. Before that point, monthly billing costs less in total even though its monthly rate is higher.

Twelve monthly payments total $227.88 for Essential, $539.88 for Core and $1,067.88 for Advanced. Compared with their annual totals, paying yearly saves $48, $108 or $240 respectively.

For a short series, buy the flexibility. For an established year-round show, annual billing is easier to justify. Cancellation stops renewal; it does not turn an annual commitment into monthly billing or automatically refund previous charges.

StreamYard pricing per month

The lower advertised annual equivalent is a budgeting comparison, not a monthly installment offer. For example, Core's $35.99 annual equivalent corresponds to a calculated $431.88 year. Monthly Core is $44.99.

Confirm the billing interval, amount due and renewal amount before purchase. The pricing page expressly allows different prices for promotions, renewal terms and custom offers.

StreamYard cost for three real buying situations

Choose the cheapest eligible plan that covers the deliverable. These are illustrative workloads calculated from the maker's prices and limits, not reports of subscriptions purchased or shows tested.

A weekly solo show

Assume an individual publishes 52 one-hour shows a year, streams to at most 2 destinations and accepts the StreamYard logo.

Essential costs $179.88 annually, or about $3.46 per show. Staying monthly all year costs $227.88, or about $4.38 per show. Free may suffice if the account's displayed streaming allowance covers the schedule and only one destination is needed.

If the show needs its own branding and a recorded broadcast, Core's annual cost is about $8.31 per show. That is a production requirement driving the upgrade, not audience size.

A two-host interview podcast that also records

Assume two individual collaborators plus a guest, four one-hour episodes per month, and a branded live show with editable recordings afterward.

Core covers the visible participant count and explicitly includes the recording features. It costs about $11.25 per episode on monthly billing, or $9.00 per episode across 48 episodes on annual billing.

The local-recording documentation explains that separate participant files do not multiply recording hours. A one-hour interview remains one hour toward the recording allowance.

At that schedule, the year contains 48 hours of sessions, leaving only 2 hours within the included 50-hour library before allowing for rehearsals or retakes. Core plus the 100-hour total-storage option costs $485.76 annually, about $10.12 per episode. On monthly billing the combined bill is $49.98, about $12.50 per episode.

Enable local recording before the session. In the studio, open Settings > Recording > Record locally for each participant, choose audio and video or audio only, and keep participants connected until uploads finish. Individual tracks cannot be reconstructed afterward if local recording was off.

A company running monthly webinars

Assume one one-hour webinar each month, two account operators and a requirement to host the event for the company's audience.

Business's default 2 seats fit those operators. Twelve hours of retained sessions sit well below its documented 700+ storage hours. Neither fact settles webinar attendance capacity: request the included attendee allowance and the price of any necessary add-on.

There is no defensible public dollar total to insert here. For a monthly Business quote, one webinar per month costs the base subscription plus required seat and webinar add-ons per event. If the annual all-in quote is A, divide A by 12 for the per-webinar cost.

If two hosts and a producer all need their own account access, that is 3 seats: one more than the documented default. A presenter who only joins as a guest is a different requirement. Do not budget this company scenario at Advanced's individual rate simply because the event expects fewer than 100 viewers.

Storage and billing costs that change the decision

Unlimited streaming does not mean unlimited saved recordings. Core and Advanced each have a 50-hour library; their documented per-stream recording limit is 10 hours. Business's is 24 hours.

The storage rules and add-on prices list these Core/Advanced options:

• 100 hours total: $4.99/month or $53.88/year.
• 200 hours total: $8.99/month or $101.88/year.
• 400 hours total: $17.99/month or $203.88/year.

These replace the included capacity. Buying the 200-hour option produces 200 hours total, not 250.

When storage is full, you can keep streaming, but StreamYard recording is disabled until you free space or increase capacity. Treat the published add-on as a capacity purchase, not an automatically billed per-hour overage rate.

Export and delete recordings you no longer need online, or budget for enough retention. Removing extra storage can delete older files. Download important recordings before a paid subscription expires: the cancellation guidance says they become unavailable afterward and cannot be restored.

StreamYard free trial, refunds and discounts

The public cards offer a 7-day free trial for Essential, Core and Advanced. That is separate from the permanent Free plan.

The pricing FAQ states a 7-day money-back guarantee on the first charge only. Cancellation and a refund request are different actions; do not assume stopping renewal requests your money back.

The subscription-information page says individual discounts are unavailable. A general student-discount entitlement was not verified. Nonprofit and educational organizations can request a special offer, but the maker does not publish a universal discount amount in the Business update.

What changed in StreamYard's plans

Two dated changes explain why older plan names are still circulating.

On August 29, 2024, StreamYard introduced Core, Advanced and Teams to replace its legacy non-business subscriptions. Its announcement described migration through September 28, 2024, with associated price changes taking effect at renewal.

In December 2025, StreamYard introduced its Business-plan transition for qualifying accounts. That notice says affected users renew at the new Business price shown in Billing, with email reminders 30 and 15 days before renewal.

Today's public pricing cards include Essential again and do not show a standalone Teams card. The 2024 announcement does not date the current Essential offer. Use today's offer for a purchase; neither a historical tier name nor an old price establishes your renewal bill.

When another tool is the better buy

Compare the eligible package and its limits when distribution or editing is the main job. The cheapest offer only helps if it covers the work you need.

Restream fits a broadcast whose priority is sending one stream to several channels; its current package page lists social destinations and custom RTMP, so compare the channel and usage allowance before choosing its streaming offer.

Riverside is the stronger shortlist for a recording-first podcast: its own site describes separate local audio/video tracks and text-based editing; compare the recording and editing workflow through its podcast offer.

For a company event, use the best webinar platform comparison to evaluate the event workflow alongside the subscription.

StreamYard pricing questions

Is StreamYard free?

Yes. There is a $0 Free plan distinct from the paid-plan trial. It retains the logo, limits streaming and local recording, and does not provide recording downloads.

How much does StreamYard cost per month?

The public individual rates are $18.99 for Essential, $44.99 for Core and $88.99 for Advanced on monthly billing, alongside Free. Annual equivalents are lower. Business pricing depends on the account offer or quote.

Do I need to pay for StreamYard?

Not for eligible use within Free's limits. Pay when you need additional streaming capacity or paid production features. Organizations should confirm Business eligibility instead of assuming an individual plan applies.

Why is StreamYard charging me?

Paid subscriptions renew automatically. Check the subscribed account's billing interval and renewal date; a Business transition can also change an affected account's renewal price. An unexplained charge needs account-specific support, not an assumption that Free itself became paid.

How do I cancel my subscription to StreamYard?

Follow the official cancellation steps: My Account, then Billing or Manage Plan, then Cancel StreamYard subscription. Paid access continues to the end of the term. Download needed recordings before it expires.

What are some platforms similar to StreamYard?

Restream and Riverside are the two alternatives considered here. Start with Restream for distribution across channels and Riverside for a recording-and-editing workflow; verify the package that covers your intended use.

What are the top 5 live streaming platforms?

There is no universal top five for this purchase. A streaming studio, a social destination and a webinar platform do different jobs. Choose by destinations, guest production, recording deliverables and event requirements before comparing subscription totals.

Is OBS 100% free?

Yes. OBS Studio is free, open-source software for recording and live streaming. That does not make equipment, connectivity or any separately purchased services free.

Is StreamYard a legitimate company?

StreamYard is a commercial product with published subscription plans, support documentation and cancellation procedures. Those establish what is being sold; they do not guarantee that a particular plan fits your show or that every event will run without problems.

How does StreamYard work?

You produce a show in a browser studio, bring in participants and send the broadcast to connected destinations. Recording and branding options depend on the plan; local recording must be enabled before the session to produce individual participant files.

Use the AI business workflow audit checklist to map the work around your show before adding another subscription.