Why pay for costly software and complicated hardware to live stream events? Explore these five free tools instead.

OBS (Win/Mac/Linux): It is a powerful open source program that is available for free and can be. Open source software for live streaming and recording. OBS Studios, also known as.

Free Live Streaming Switcher For Mac

Live streaming events has its upsides, and as businesses invest in their remote work infrastructure, it’s becoming an essential practice.

You can reach people who couldn’t make it to the event due to cost, timing, or logistical limitations. You can expand the audience reach beyond your venue or city and attract digital viewers from around the world. You can also increase audience engagement by allowing viewers to comment and ask questions.

Live streaming also allows you to keep the show running when crises such as the coronavirus outbreak hit. Large-scale events such as the Grammys and Broadway readings can shut down their physical presence and take the show online. Musicians and artists can use it to live stream impromptu gigs and create digital events from scratch.

There are many live streaming tools that can be used to broadcast events online.

However, if cost concerns are keeping you from live streaming, then free live streaming tools are a simple fix to the problem.

5 free tools to live stream your event

Here are the tools we will cover (arranged alphabetically):

This article looks at five free live streaming software options. See the full list of free live streaming software solutions here.

First, what do we mean by “free”? For a tool to be classified as free, it must offer a standalone free version and not a trial version where the product must be purchased after a set period. For more details on how we selected these products, you can read our methodology here.

1. Facebook Live

Facebook Live will help you jump right into broadcasting events online. It comes with dual benefits. Firstly, it bypasses the complexities of traditional live streaming platforms that require hefty hardware setup and complex video rendering capabilities. Next, it taps into an already existing audience base—Facebook friends or Facebook page followers.

A Facebook Live event stream (Source)What do you need to go live?

✔ A smartphone with the Facebook app installed or a computer/laptop with a built-in/add-on webcam.

✔ A personal Facebook profile or Facebook page for the business/event.

What are the key features of the tool?

Toggle the privacy setting to make live streams visible to the public or keep them private within friends/followers. Also, tag people or locations and add filters, writing, and drawing to the videos.
Access metrics such as peak live viewers, total views, average watch time, and viewer demographics.
Add a personal touch when going live on a smartphone—walk around the event, talk to people, and broadcast from a personal vantage point.
Screen-share if using a computer/laptop. However, this requires downloading a screen-sharing extension.
Save videos to your Facebook gallery once the broadcast ends so that they can be viewed later.

What should you watch out for when using the tool?

Negative comments from any viewer are visible to the entire audience and enshrined in the video.
Using Facebook’s built-in publisher to enhance the video quality of the live stream requires technical know-how and third-party tools.
Live stream can be also fetched from a video encoder via an API. However, the process requires some technical know-how and screening under Facebook’s App Review policies.

Who is the tool most suitable for?

Events of any size—from a small poetry reading of fifty people to a mega product launch of 5,000 attendants. This is the best tool to leverage a personal or business Facebook presence and reach an audience that has already shown interest in what you do.

2. Instagram Live

Instagram Live is a feature of Instagram Stories that can be used to broadcast events to a digital audience and engage with them in real time. It is quite similar to Facebook Live in its functionalities and user experience. The catch is that Instagram Live allows users to go live only on the mobile version of the tool and not the desktop version.

Starting a live stream on Instagram (Source)What do you need to go live?

✔ A smartphone with the Instagram app installed.

✔ A personal or business/event Instagram profile.

What are the key features of the tool?

Draw, color, tag people, and add location, emojis, gifs, and filters on the live feed in real time.
Select between private or public audiences. Whenever a live stream starts, push notifications alert the user’s followers.
Engage with the audience as they send likes and comments. A stream of comments is displayed on the bottom of the screen—pin select comments to the top of the comment stream or disable comments entirely.
Filter out comments containing offensive keywords, phrases, or emojis by choosing the “hide offensive comments” option before going live.
Save videos to Stories so that they can be revisited by viewers for up to 24 hours after a live stream. Saving videos to Highlights on the profile makes them available beyond 24 hours.
Go live with another user on Instagram by having them join your stream and request to go live with you. This yields a split-screen interaction that viewers can watch.

What should you watch out for when using the tool?

The tool is more accustomed to the portrait view (vertical view with an aspect ratio of 9:16) than the landscape view (horizontal view with an aspect ratio of 3:2).
All live videos have to be recorded on smartphones. They can’t be imported from other devices.
You can track metrics such as viewer count, likes, and comments during and after live streams. However, an Instagram Business account is needed for metrics such as accounts reached and impressions.

Who is the tool most suitable for?

Events of any size—from a book launch with 100 people to a concert for a few thousand people. For those with a personal or business Instagram presence, this tool will help tap into an existing audience as well as reach potential digital viewers from around the world.

3. Periscope

Periscope is a livestreaming app for iOS and Android smartphones that helps broadcast events to Twitter as well as the Periscope TV website. Periscope was acquired by Twitter before its launch in 2015 and has since been Twitter’s answer to Facebook Live and Instagram Live.

Watching the replay of an event on the Periscope website (Source)What do you need to go live?

✔ A smartphone with the Periscope app installed.

File system for mac. ✔ A personal or business/event Periscope account.

✔ A Twitter account to connect broadcasts to Twitter.

What are the key features of the tool?

Alert Periscope followers with an auto-generated notification whenever a broadcast starts.
Increase the virality of events by enabling viewers to share the live stream on Twitter and Periscope as well as share a link to the broadcast anywhere else.
Store event broadcasts for replay and let those appear on your Periscope and Twitter followers’ feeds.
Access broadcast stats such as live viewers, replay viewers, and time watched to better understand the audience.
Allow all viewers to comment on live streams or send likes, or limit this functionality to the people you follow.

What should you watch out for when using the tool?

By default, all live streams are public and viewable by anyone. To create a private broadca

Free Live Streaming For Mac