Black Candy vs Koel
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted media servers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Black Candy
Music streaming server
VS
Koel
Personal music streaming server with an elegant interface
| Feature | Black Candy | Koel |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 89 · Excellent | 95 · Excellent |
| Category | Media Servers | Media Servers |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Ruby | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 4,418 | ★ 17,262 |
| First released | None | 2016 |
| Replaces | Spotify, Apple Music | Spotify |
What are Black Candy and Koel?
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
Koel
Koel is a personal music streaming server with a focus on a clean, modern web interface. It supports smart playlists, last.fm scrobbling, and streaming your own collection from any browser.
- Elegant web player
- Smart playlists
- Last.fm scrobbling
- Mobile companion app
Black Candy vs Koel: key differences
Black Candy is written in Ruby, while Koel is built with PHP. Koel has the considerably larger community, at 17,262 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
Choose Koel if…
- Beautiful interface
- Active community
Watch out for
- Needs a separate database
- Limited transcoding options
Frequently asked questions
Is Black Candy or Koel better?
Neither is universally better. Koel has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Black Candy and Koel free and open-source?
Yes. Black Candy is licensed under MIT and Koel under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Black Candy and Koel with Docker?
Black Candy: yes. Koel: yes.