Black Candy vs Feishin

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?
FeatureBlack CandyFeishin
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setup≈5-minute setup
Health score89 · Excellent93 · Excellent
CategoryMedia ServersMedia Servers
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguageRubyTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM512 MB256 MB
Deploymentdockerdocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 4,418★ 9,986
First releasedNone2023
ReplacesSpotify, Apple MusicSpotify

What are Black Candy and Feishin?

Black Candy

A self hosted music streaming server. Contribute to blackcandy-org/blackcandy development by creating an account on GitHub.

  • Personal music streaming
  • Responsive web player
  • Multi-user accounts
  • PWA support

Read the full Black Candy guide →

Feishin

Feishin is a modern, full-featured music player for Subsonic, Navidrome, and Jellyfin servers. It offers a polished desktop and web interface with synced lyrics, scrobbling, and theming.

  • Subsonic and Jellyfin support
  • Synced lyrics
  • Scrobbling
  • Desktop and web clients

Read the full Feishin guide →

Black Candy vs Feishin: key differences

Black Candy is written in Ruby, while Feishin is built with TypeScript. Licensing differs — MIT for Black Candy versus GPL-3.0 for Feishin. Feishin is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Black Candy. Feishin has the considerably larger community, at 9,986 GitHub stars versus 4,418.

Why pick each one

Choose Black Candy if…

  • Clean modern interface
  • Simple to deploy

Watch out for

  • Music only
  • Smaller ecosystem
Black Candy details

Choose Feishin if…

  • Beautiful modern UI
  • Multi-server support

Watch out for

  • Client only
  • Requires an existing server
Feishin details

Frequently asked questions

Is Black Candy or Feishin better?

Feishin is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Black Candy if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Black Candy and Feishin free and open-source?

Yes. Black Candy is licensed under MIT and Feishin under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Black Candy and Feishin with Docker?

Black Candy: yes. Feishin: yes.

Which is lighter on resources, Black Candy or Feishin?

Feishin has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Black Candy. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.

Related comparisons