SHSelfHostIndex

mjpg-streamer vs OpenCvSharp

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

Not the right match-up?
MJ mjpg-streamer Stream JPEG frames from webcams over HTTP VS OP OpenCvSharp .NET wrapper for OpenCV computer vision
Featuremjpg-streamerOpenCvSharp
CategoryVideo SurveillanceVideo Surveillance
LicenseGPL-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageCC#
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB512 MB
Deploymentbinary, sourcesource
GitHub stars★ 3,246★ 6,056
First released20132008
ReplacesWebcam streaming servicesCommercial vision SDKs

Why pick each one

Choose mjpg-streamer if…

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (3.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C
mjpg-streamer details

Choose OpenCvSharp if…

  • Mature and complete
  • Great for custom systems
OpenCvSharp details

Frequently asked questions

Is mjpg-streamer or OpenCvSharp better?

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

Are mjpg-streamer and OpenCvSharp free and open-source?

Yes. mjpg-streamer is licensed under GPL-2.0 and OpenCvSharp under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run mjpg-streamer and OpenCvSharp with Docker?

mjpg-streamer: check the project docs for container support. OpenCvSharp: check the project docs for container support.

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