Icecast 2 is a free, open-source streaming media server for internet radio and video broadcasts. Explore features, setup, pricing and top alternatives in 2026.
Icecast 2 is the current, actively maintained major version of Icecast, an open-source streaming media server originally created in 1998-1999 by Jack Moffitt and Barath Raghavan for a university radio station. Rewritten from the ground up starting in 2001 and released in January 2004, Icecast 2 added multi-format audio and video support, improved metadata handling and better scalability over the original single-format design.
The project is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation, the nonprofit multimedia organization also behind the Ogg Vorbis, Opus and FLAC formats that Icecast streams natively. Because it carries no license fee and no corporate ownership, Icecast has become a de facto open-source standard for internet radio, powering everything from small hobbyist stations to the backend of several commercial streaming hosting services.
Icecast does not encode audio itself; it acts as a relay that accepts a stream from a separate source client (such as Ices, BUTT, Mixxx or Liquidsoap) and redistributes it to any number of connected listeners over HTTP, using mount points to host multiple simultaneous streams on one server.
Icecast 2 supports a wide range of audio and video formats, including MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus and FLAC for audio, and WebM, Theora and NSV for video, plus compatibility with the SHOUTcast source protocol so many SHOUTcast-era encoders and stream directories continue to work unmodified.
Each Icecast instance can host an unlimited number of mount points, each with independent authentication, bitrate and access-control settings, and instances can be chained together through relay and cascading configurations to distribute listener load across multiple servers for large audiences.
A built-in web-based admin and status interface exposes real-time listener counts, stream metadata and server health, while optional YP directory listing lets public stations register themselves for discovery by streaming directory sites and player apps.
Icecast 2 itself carries no license fee: it is released under the GPL-2.0 license and can be downloaded, compiled and self-hosted at zero cost on Linux, BSD, macOS or Windows, with the only ongoing expense being server hardware and bandwidth.
Because there is no official managed offering from the Xiph.Org Foundation, a secondary market of third-party hosting providers sells pre-configured, managed Icecast servers, usually priced by bandwidth or listener capacity and bundled with conveniences like AutoDJ scheduling, web dashboards and Liquidsoap automation for users who do not want to self-manage the server.
Yes, it is released under the GPL-2.0 license and maintained by the nonprofit Xiph.Org Foundation, with no license fees.
MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus and FLAC audio, plus WebM, Theora and NSV video.
Yes, Icecast only relays streams; you need a source client such as Ices, BUTT, Mixxx, Liquidsoap or ffmpeg to encode and push audio to the server.
Yes, via relay and cascading configurations that distribute listener load across multiple Icecast servers.
Yes, Icecast supports the SHOUTcast source protocol, so many SHOUTcast-oriented tools work with it.
Linux, BSD, macOS and Windows, since it is written in portable C.