Ranking The Best Live Video Streaming Solutions in 2024

Do you live stream events, services, or even solo content like gaming or influencing? At the most basic, you only need a smartphone and a social account to get started. But most businesses and organizations want to invest in high-quality video content, including video streaming.

Certainly, on the enterprise level (where you’d need enterprise video streaming solutions), there’s a need for quality and consistency that requires the right software tools.

There are all sorts of live streaming solutions out there, ranging from free and open source to technical professional-grade enterprise video streaming solutions (and everything in between). If you need to pick one for your organization, it’s hard to know where to start!

So we’ve put together our definitive ranking: these are the best live video streaming solutions in 2023. They cover a wide range of use cases, from corporate video content to live events to worship services and more.

Throughout, we’ll cover key features as well as which apps are best for which contexts.

Quick note: In this review article, we’re discussing live video streaming software — that’s the tools and apps you use to actually create a video stream. We’re not discussing 

What Is Live Streaming Software?

Live video streaming software takes care of several steps and processes you need to create a video stream. Live streaming software handles the mixing of more than one video source, the stream design (all the stuff on screen that isn’t live video), and — usually — the encoding.

In other words, live streaming solutions are the tools that transform a person talking to a webcam into a produced, hosted, and sometimes multi-input or multi-camera production.

It’s distinct from live streaming platforms like YouTube Live or streaming services like Twitch. Those are important, too, but they’re in a separate category from live video streaming solutions. We won’t be covering platforms or services in this article, with one exception: some solutions are both software and service. (It gets confusing, but we’ll do our best to keep it simple.)

The 5 Best Live Video Streaming Solutions in 2023

With a working definition in hand, let’s get to the rankings!

1. ProPresenter (Best All-Around Professional Live Streaming Solution)

If you’re familiar with ProPresenter, you might think of it as presentation software — and you’d be right, partly. But ProPresenter is much, much more than a glorified PowerPoint replacement. It’s also one of the best all-around professional live-streaming solutions on the market today.

ProPresenter lets you go live from a familiar interface that you might already be using to produce content. It’s equally at home with live video and designed graphics, and it can handle an unlimited number of inputs and outputs — your hardware is the only limiting factor.

ProPresenter’s advanced design functions give you everything you need for stream design and building the graphical assets and overlays you need for your stream.

ProPresenter functions as a powerful software encoder, and it gives you access to Resi’s Resilient Streaming Protocol, the most resilient way to stream.

ProPresenter is accessible to the beginner, yet it’s packed full of the features and capabilities that professionals need — like support for broadcast formats, lower thirds, user-generated chirons, and more. When paired with ProPresenter Scoreboard, you gain a whole host of sports-specific features, like live scoreboards with live data feeds and prebuilt templates for the 10 most popular team sports.

An extra bonus for Mac users: ProPresenter is one of only a handful of live streaming solutions that supports macOS.

2. Wirecast

Wirecast is a cross-platform streaming solution that can record streams locally and send them to any provider or platform that uses RTMP (which is pretty much all the big ones).

Wirecast is targeting the pro market, with unlimited inputs and outputs and broad support for cameras and devices. Live switching, picture in picture (PIP), and even audio delay are all available here.

One unique capability is Wirecast’s simultaneous video conferencing: you can achieve this using other tools, but the experience is smoother here.

Other pro-friendly elements include support for NDI, pro audio FX, and GPU-enhanced video encoding. 

Before you go all-in with Wirecast, be aware that Wirecast has some pretty demanding system specs. The cost is high, and even higher if you want to unlock all the features that are reserved for Wirecast Pro users (like NDI, multi-track audio recording, and live scoreboards).

3. vMix

vMix is an interesting broadcasting software option: it’s a professional-quality solution built first for video production, but there’s plenty of live video streaming solution capability here as well, giving you more than enough to produce a quality live video streaming experience.

The product scales from quite mediocre quality (at the basic free plan) to exceptionally robust pro capabilities (at the $1200 Pro end of their pricing tiers). 

With five tiers of features (and prices), vMix tries to offer something for virtually every use case. The pricing tiers seem to scale relatively fairly according to the typical users and organizations that would need the increasingly powerful sets of features.

vMix is Windows-only, so Mac users should definitely look elsewhere.

This application is definitely aimed at pro users more than volunteers, amateurs, or hobby streamers. At the higher tiers, you can utilize up to 1,000 inputs and outputs at up to 4K resolution. Pro formats like NDI are here as well, as are instant replay and slow-mo capabilities.

The only drawbacks here are price, lack of Mac support, and perhaps the learning curve: this is a technically capable product that might not be as friendly as others if you aren’t a highly experienced video editor.

3. OBS Studio

OBS Studio is extremely popular and widely used for two big reasons: one, it’s free. Two, it’s really effective in the right circumstances.

Many solo streamers (gamers, influencers, and other internet personalities) use OBS Studio (or the next entry on this list, Streamlabs OBS) because it meets their relatively basic needs and doesn’t require particularly powerful hardware to run well.

Pros won’t find the kinds of advanced features they need here, but that makes sense given the target market (and the absence of a price tag).

If you’re running a relatively basic live stream, then this video streaming solution is worth a look. But it’s not a great fit for enterprise users, who likely need a pro product and an enterprise video platform instead.

4. Streamlabs

Sharing a similar underlying architecture to OBS Studio, Streamlabs is a freemium option that enables video streaming to multiple platforms via web browser or desktop client. It’s targeted mainly to gamers who stream and features a variety of pre-built stream overlays that make the most sense in gaming live streams. The typical enterprise or live production use cases won’t find these very useful.

Some users find Streamlabs to be simpler to use than OBS Studio, and there are some useful add-ons (especially for paid users) that extend functionality. Because of the obvious gaming focus, we’re ranking it lower on this list: it’s still a good product, but it probably isn’t the first place to look if you need a live video streaming solution for a house of worship, an educational setting, or in the enterprise.

5. XSplit Broadcaster

XSplit Broadcaster is a Windows-only live streaming solution that occupies a sort of midrange: it can do much more than the freebies, but it’s less capable (and less technically complex) than the more business- and pro-oriented streaming solutions higher on this list.

If options like vMix or Wirecast felt like overkill and Streamlabs couldn’t do enough, XSplit Broadcaster may be the compromise you’re looking for.

XSplit gives you the tools to do video broadcasting, streaming and stream delay, scene design and preview, virtual events and conferences, Q&A sessions, and more. Multi-cam support is here, though the list of compatible sources is narrower than with some pro tools.

One other caution: While XSplit isn’t all that difficult to use, you will need some basic understanding of how to set up the hardware and software components to get your stream going. XSplit doesn’t provide the kinds of presets you’d find in more beginner-friendly tools.

Jump Straight to the Best: Try ProPresenter Live Streaming Solutions Now

There are plenty of live streaming solutions out there, each with its own mix of features and weaknesses and at a staggering range of prices. 

There’s no need to waste your time on incomplete or overpriced solutions: forget the rest and jump straight to the best with ProPresenter. 

ProPresenter offers the best value for your money, with powerful streaming functions packaged right alongside professional presentation and design tools. Whether for your live event, a corporate video, or your weekly worship services, ProPresenter is the ideal choice.

Want to see for yourself? Start your unrestricted two-week trial now to see how ProPresenter outpaces the competition!