Stream Live reaches general availability

Cloudflare Stream Live has exited beta and is now generally available for production use. The feature lets developers add live video capabilities to websites and native apps without managing the underlying encoding, storage, or delivery infrastructure. During its beta period, Stream ingested millions of minutes of live video and supported use cases ranging from concert broadcasts to 24/7 OTT services.

Why live video infrastructure is difficult

Delivering live video at scale presents several technical challenges that make it difficult to build on general-purpose cloud infrastructure:

  • Bandwidth costs add up quickly. A one-hour 1080p stream at 8Mbps consumes 3.6GB. At typical cloud provider egress prices, even moderate delivery volumes become expensive.
  • Real-time encoding is required. Viewers on mobile networks need streams re-encoded into multiple resolutions on the fly so playback can adapt to changing connection quality. Running the necessary encoding fleets is costly and complex.
  • Ingest location affects quality. RTMPS sends video over TCP, where a single lost packet halts the entire connection. The farther a broadcaster is from the ingest server, the more network hops and the higher the risk of buffering.
  • Delivery location matters equally. Video must be cached at points of presence near viewers; longer round trips lead to buffering and quality drops.
  • Protocols are in transition. RTMPS has been abandoned since 2012 and dates back to the Flash era. SRT is emerging but not universally supported, and WebRTC has only recently become viable for one-to-many HD broadcasting.

The traditional solution has been stitching together services from multiple vendors, which forces developers to learn video streaming protocols, codecs, and delivery pipelines, then write glue code to connect everything.

What owning the network enables

Cloudflare operates its own global network and controls the hardware in it. That removes several limitations that third-party video platforms typically impose:

  • Hardware-accelerated encoding. Newer codecs require specialized encoders. Cloudflare is installing this hardware in its own racks rather than being limited by what public cloud providers offer.
  • Unlimited simulcasting. There is no cap on the number of destinations you can restream to, since the network is self-operated.
  • Bandwidth-independent pricing. Because Cloudflare doesn't resell another provider's bandwidth, customers are charged per minute of video delivered rather than per gigabyte. High-resolution streams don't incur a delivery penalty.

Built-in features without extra fees

Several capabilities that other platforms sell as add-ons are included with Stream Live:

  • Free encoding and ingestion. Most platforms charge for these separately and some require you to select specific datacenters, bitrates, and frame rates.
  • Free analytics. Server-side and client-side analytics are available via API and Dashboard, queryable per video, creator, country, and other dimensions. This can support per-creator billing, popularity tracking, or viral-content detection.
  • Instant live recordings. When a stream ends, the recording is immediately available through the same APIs and management tools used for pre-recorded video, with no DVR-mode add-on required.

Going live in four steps

Stream Live works with the same RTMPS and SRT tools broadcasters use elsewhere, but keeps access control and presentation on your own property. The setup flow:

  1. Create a live input from the Stream Dashboard or via API.
  2. Copy the RTMPS URL and key into any compatible broadcasting software, such as Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), or integrate directly into a native app.
  3. Verify the stream in the Dashboard, which shows a preview and real-time connection status within seconds of going live.
  4. Embed playback using the Stream Player or any player supporting HLS or DASH. On iOS, feeding the HLS manifest URL to AVPlayer is sufficient.

Production use cases

Some customers using Stream Live in production are themselves live-video specialists. Switcher Studio, whose iOS app enables branded multi-camera streams, reports over 100,000 streams per month from its users:

"Since 2014, Switcher has helped creators connect to audiences with livestreams. Now, our users create over 100,000 streams per month. As we grew, we needed a scalable content delivery solution. Cloudflare offers secure, fast delivery, and even allowed us to offer new features, like multistreaming. Trusting Cloudflare Stream lets our team focus on the live production tools that make Switcher unique."

Stream Live is available now through the Cloudflare Dashboard, with no code required to begin a first stream. API access is available for teams ready to build custom live-video features on top of the service.