Snapcast VS Icecast

Compare Snapcast vs Icecast and see what are their differences.

Icecast

Icecast streaming media server (Mirror) - Please report bugs at https://gitlab.xiph.org/xiph/icecast-server/issues (by xiph)
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Snapcast Icecast
69 33
6,673 493
2.1% 0.0%
9.2 0.0
10 days ago over 1 year ago
C++ C
GNU General Public License v3.0 only GNU General Public License v3.0 only
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Snapcast

Posts with mentions or reviews of Snapcast. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-03-02.
  • Raspberry Pi Pico audio player
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Mar 2025
    You could connect airplay to snapcast[0] then use an embedded snapcast player, like mine[1], I do this on an ESP32 with 320KiB of SRAM

    [0]: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast

    [1]: https://github.com/davidventura/esp-snapcast

  • Heartbroken by the App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Sep 2024
    I tried shairport some time ago, but settled on https://github.com/badaix/snapcast and have a really great and reliable open-source multi-room setup
  • Ask HN: How do you play syncronized audio across multiple receivers in 2024?
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 May 2024
    I’ve had success with Snapcast when looking into this previously https://github.com/badaix/snapcast
  • Why is Spotify not implementing this?
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jul 2023
    https://github.com/badaix/snapcast!

    Works perfectly on pis scattered around the house.

  • MultiRoom MulitCast Spotify Sound System Recommendations
    1 project | /r/homeautomation | 21 May 2023
    Snapcast: The cheapest and most modular option is deploying small form factor linux clients (raspberry pis, or any host all) with an audio interface (3.5mm, RCA, or otherwise), and connect the audio output interface to your choice of speaker. Snapcast is the open-source multi-room brains. It works well in my experience, but it is tricky to get setup properly to start with. Spotify Connect support is possible so you can launch your Spotify listening session from the Spotify app. Snapcast also integrates into Home Assistant for ease of adding/removing clients from the active listening sessions (yes, plural. You can have multiple listening sessions from multiple audio input sources at once).
  • Audio options for 3 to 5 zones.
    1 project | /r/homeautomation | 1 May 2023
    - snapcast - this server/client software will broadcast synchronized audio from any source to any snapcast client. The server and clients can all run on the same computer. Individual clients are assigned to their own usb soundcard. Source and volume for each client is controlled through the webpage and/or homeassistant.
  • I don't want streaming music, I just want to stream my music
    22 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Apr 2023
    I have a music library on my home server that I use mopidy to play via the iris plugin integrated into my home assistant UI. It plays over Snapcast which streams over the network to multiple devices in the home with independent volume control. I can fire up the Snapcast client in my phone to get it going there as well, which does work over vpn if I'm away, though I generally just fire up the files from my phones SD card for out-of-home listening. I recently started using whipper on Linux to extract audio from craigslist cds.

    https://mopidy.com/

    https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/

    https://github.com/badaix/snapcast

    https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper

  • Whole home sync'd rpi audio w plex, spotify, airplay
    5 projects | /r/selfhosted | 4 Apr 2023
    You want SnapCast. You'd run snapserver on your Linux box and snapclient on your Pi's. Snapserver has support for Airplay (via shairport-sync) and Spotify (via librespot). I recommend using MPD for your music library, as I don't think PlexAmp can output audio in a way that's useful for snapserver.
  • Camper Touchscreen Audio Setup
    3 projects | /r/raspberry_pi | 31 Mar 2023
    Instead of splitting audio from the jack output you can create a Little network with a router and have more rpi streaming music over It using snapcastsnapcast .
  • Recommendations for Multi-Room Speaker With Multiple Audio Sources?
    1 project | /r/homeautomation | 1 Mar 2023
    If you're into the idea of an open-source client/server architecture, then there's Snapcast. If you have a few Raspberry Pis (one per output source) or any other box that can run Linux and has an audio out interface, then this is cheap and easy with an active Home Assistant integration too.

Icecast

Posts with mentions or reviews of Icecast. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-12-30.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Snapcast and Icecast you can also consider the following projects:

moOde Audio - moOde sources and configs

AzuraCast - A self-hosted web radio management suite, including turnkey installer tools for the full radio software stack and a modern, easy-to-use web app to manage your stations.

LMS - Lightweight Music Server. Access your self-hosted music using a web interface.

LibreTime - LibreTime: Radio Broadcast & Automation Platform

Ampache - A web based audio/video streaming application and file manager allowing you to access your music & videos from anywhere, using almost any internet enabled device.

InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
featured
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SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
www.saashub.com
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