Beets vs Flood

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted media servers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureBeetsFlood
CategoryMedia ServersMedia Servers
LicenseMITGPL-3.0-or-later
LanguagePythonTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM256 MB100 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metalbare-metal
GitHub stars★ 15,509★ 2,818
First released20082023
ReplacesiTunes

Why pick each one

Choose Beets if…

  • Excellent metadata accuracy
  • Highly scriptable
Beets details

Choose Flood if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (2.8k GitHub stars)
  • Written in TypeScript
Flood details

Frequently asked questions

Is Beets or Flood better?

Neither is universally better. Beets has the larger community, while Flood is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Beets and Flood free and open-source?

Yes. Beets is licensed under MIT and Flood under GPL-3.0-or-later. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Beets and Flood with Docker?

Beets: yes. Flood: check the project docs for container support.

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