Ant Media Server Community Edition

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 837 words

The line between free and paid Ant Media runs straight through WebRTC. The Community Edition (Apache-2.0, 4,727 stars) takes RTMP from OBS, packages it as HLS, records to MP4, and exposes a REST API to script all of it. Sub-second WebRTC playback, the feature Ant Media markets on, belongs to the Enterprise edition. So the question to ask before installing is whether your viewers can live with HLS-class latency, which in practice means somewhere between a few seconds and half a minute depending on segment settings. If yes, CE is a competent, well-documented streaming origin. If your use case is "conversation with the audience", it is not the free tool you want.

Install and the ports you must open

The install script on the download page handles Ubuntu and a few other distributions: it installs a Java runtime, unpacks the server into /usr/local/antmedia, and registers a systemd unit. Docker is supported through the Dockerfile in the repo, which you build yourself against the CE release. Being a Java server, memory is the first sizing question: the 1 GB minimum is real, 2 GB is where it stops struggling under a couple of concurrent streams, and the JVM will take what you give it.

Ports: 5080 for the HTTP web panel and API, 5443 for HTTPS, 1935 for RTMP ingest. The panel at http://host:5080 walks you through creating the admin user on first visit. Applications are the unit of organisation; LiveApp exists by default, so OBS points at rtmp://host/LiveApp/ with the stream ID as the key, and the HLS playlist appears at http://host:5080/LiveApp/streams/<streamId>.m3u8. Put a reverse proxy with a real certificate in front before anyone but you watches, because browsers are strict about mixed content in HLS players.

What the Community Edition actually does

RTMP in, HLS out, with the segment length and playlist size tunable per application. Recording of every stream, or selected streams, to MP4 on disk, which is the feature that pushes a lot of people here from simpler tools: an archive of every broadcast without a second process. A REST API that creates streams, lists them, starts and stops recording, and reports viewer counts, so a booking system or a Discord bot can drive it. Adaptive bitrate is in the feature list, which lets you offer a lower rendition to viewers on poor connections at the cost of transcoding CPU. RTSP and IP camera pulling are there too, which makes it a passable camera-to-web bridge.

What is not there: WebRTC playback, the SFU for conferencing, clustering across nodes, and the various enterprise integrations. The feature matrix on antmedia.io is the authority and it has moved between releases, so read the current one rather than trusting a forum post.

Latency is the honest trade

HLS at default settings puts the viewer roughly 20 seconds behind the encoder (an estimate: segment length times playlist depth plus player buffer). Shortening segments to 2 seconds gets you closer to 6 to 10 seconds with some risk of stalls on weak connections. That is fine for a church service, a council meeting, a lecture, or a gaming stream where chat is a separate channel. It is not fine for an auction or a live Q&A. The paid tier exists precisely for the second group, and the honest self-hosted answer for them is elsewhere on this shelf rather than in CE.

Owncast, MediaMTX, and the rest of the shelf

Owncast is what most self-hosters should reach for first: single Go binary, RTMP in, HLS out, a built-in viewer page with chat, and a fraction of the memory. It does less (no REST-driven multi-stream setup, less recording control), and that is the point. MediaMTX is the protocol multitool (RTSP, RTMP, HLS, WebRTC, SRT in and out, all free) with no UI at all; it is the right choice when you need WebRTC playback without paying and can live without a panel. Ant Media CE sits between them: heavier than either, with a proper admin panel, recording, and an API, for people who want a platform-shaped thing rather than a component. For video on demand rather than live, PeerTube is a different tool entirely.

What I'd do

One-person streamer who wants a page for viewers: Owncast. Developer building a product on top of live video and willing to pay for WebRTC eventually: Ant Media CE now, on a 2 GB box behind a reverse proxy, with recording on and the API driving stream creation, because the upgrade path to the paid edition is the same server. Anyone who needs low-latency playback today and will not pay: MediaMTX with its WebRTC output. Community looking for a Twitch replacement with chat: Owncast again. CE is a good origin server; it is just not the free WebRTC server its marketing might have led you to expect.