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Decentralised, federated video platform powered by ActivityPub
PeerTube is a French decentralised video hosting platform developed by Framasoft. Using ActivityPub federation and WebTorrent peer-to-peer, it lets anyone host their own video platform while connecting to a network of independent instances.
Headquarters
Lyon, France
Founded
2017
Pricing
EU Data Hosting
Yes
Employees
11-50
Open Source
Yes
Free
Contact Sales
Billing: free
YouTube and Vimeo have built enormous audiences — and enormous control over what creators can say, earn, and publish. Demonetisation, content removal, and algorithmic suppression are the routine tools of centralised video platforms. Creators who depend on these platforms for income or distribution have no meaningful recourse when policies change.
PeerTube was built on a different premise. Developed by Framasoft, a French public-interest organisation based in Lyon, PeerTube is not a platform — it is software that anyone can install to run their own video hosting service. Launched in 2017 and funded primarily through grassroots donations and crowdfunding campaigns, it uses two technologies to solve the scaling problem that makes self-hosting impractical for popular content: ActivityPub federation and WebTorrent peer-to-peer streaming.
Federation means that video channels hosted on one PeerTube instance can be followed and subscribed to from any other instance — or from Mastodon, Pixelfed, or any other ActivityPub-compatible platform. Peer-to-peer streaming means that bandwidth costs scale with viewership: as more people watch a video simultaneously, their browsers help serve the stream to each other, reducing the load on the hosting server.
As of early 2026, the PeerTube network comprises approximately 1,700 active instances hosting over one million videos across hundreds of millions of views. No single company controls it, and no single entity can shut it down.
The ActivityPub layer is PeerTube's most strategically important feature. A video channel hosted on a small personal instance in Germany is accessible to any ActivityPub-compatible client anywhere on the Fediverse. Mastodon users can follow the channel directly from their timeline. Pixelfed users can comment on videos. This interoperability means PeerTube channels can accumulate followers across platforms, reducing dependency on any one instance's user base for discovery.
Administrators can also configure their instances to federate selectively — following specific instances and blocking others — giving them granular control over what content flows into their network.
Traditional self-hosting breaks under traffic. A single video going viral can overwhelm a modest server's bandwidth quota within hours. PeerTube's WebTorrent integration offloads this problem: viewers' browsers become partial relays for the stream, helping serve the video to subsequent viewers. This happens natively in the browser without plugins or client software. For small-to-medium instances hosting content that occasionally spikes, it meaningfully reduces infrastructure costs.
PeerTube includes live streaming via standard RTMP software — OBS Studio, ffmpeg, and others. Live streams support embedded chat, configurable replay recording, and multi-viewer interaction. Instance administrators can enable or disable live streaming per-instance. For community broadcasters, educators, or organisations running events, this removes the need for a separate streaming platform.
PeerTube instances can be extended through an official plugin system. Plugins can add custom player controls, integrate additional payment or membership systems, modify the interface, or add new moderation tools. This makes PeerTube adaptable to specific community needs without requiring a fork of the codebase.
Official Android and iOS apps launched in 2025, providing native mobile video playback, subscriptions, and notifications across the federated network. Prior to the official apps, PeerTube users relied on third-party clients with inconsistent feature coverage.
PeerTube software is free. There are no licensing fees, subscription tiers, or usage-based charges from Framasoft. The costs involved in running PeerTube are infrastructure costs: the server, storage, and bandwidth needed to host your instance.
For a small instance hosting a few hundred videos with modest traffic, a basic VPS starts at around EUR 5-10 per month. Larger instances with significant video libraries or high-traffic content require more storage and bandwidth, which increases cost proportionally.
For users who do not want to self-host, two paths exist. First, joining an existing public instance is free — many community instances welcome new users at no charge. Second, third-party managed PeerTube hosting providers handle server administration for a monthly fee that varies by storage and bandwidth allocation. Framasoft does not offer managed hosting directly.
The absence of platform fees is meaningful over time. YouTube keeps a 45% cut of AdSense revenue. Vimeo's paid plans start at EUR 12/month and cap upload bandwidth. A self-hosted PeerTube instance with EUR 10/month of hosting has no revenue cut, no upload limits beyond server storage, and no policy enforcement from a platform owner.
Framasoft is a French public-interest organisation (association loi 1901) — legally prohibited from distributing profits to members, funded almost entirely by donations. This structure eliminates the commercial incentive to harvest user data or sell advertising.
The PeerTube codebase is open source under AGPL-3.0, meaning every line is publicly auditable. The software contains no advertising infrastructure, no tracking pixels, and no analytics reporting to Framasoft.
GDPR compliance for PeerTube is the responsibility of instance operators, not Framasoft. Each instance operator is the data controller for their users. EU-based operators running instances in European data centres can offer their users full GDPR compliance — but this requires intentional configuration and a proper privacy policy, not just installing the software.
For organisations requiring data sovereignty — broadcasting on infrastructure they own, with no third-party platform terms to accept — PeerTube is one of very few viable options.
Independent creators and community media organisations who want to publish video without platform terms dictating what they can say. PeerTube instances can be configured with community-specific content policies.
Educators and institutions running private or semi-private video infrastructure — universities, training organisations, or internal corporate broadcasting. PeerTube can be run as a private instance, closed to public registration.
Organisations with data sovereignty requirements who cannot upload content to US-controlled platforms. A self-hosted EU instance keeps all video data within EU jurisdiction.
Fediverse participants who are already active on Mastodon or Pixelfed and want to extend their presence to video content through the same federated social graph.
PeerTube is technically impressive and philosophically coherent. It does what it claims: provides a self-hosted, federated, peer-to-peer video platform with no platform owner and no revenue cut. The trade-offs are real — setup requires technical skill, content discovery across the federated network is genuinely fragmented, and reliability depends entirely on your hosting infrastructure. For creators or organisations that accept those trade-offs in exchange for genuine platform independence, PeerTube is the strongest EU-aligned option available.
PeerTube software is completely free and open source under AGPL-3.0. Joining an existing public instance costs nothing. Running your own instance costs only hosting infrastructure — typically EUR 5-20/month depending on storage and traffic needs.
Yes. Installing PeerTube requires a Linux server, command-line familiarity, and the ability to configure a web server, database, and SSL certificate. For non-technical users, joining an existing public instance or using a managed hosting provider is the practical path.
PeerTube has no algorithm, no advertising, and no centralised moderation. Your content is not subject to demonetisation or arbitrary removal by a platform owner. The trade-off is a much smaller audience and fragmented discovery across thousands of independent instances. PeerTube suits creators who prioritise control over reach.
GDPR compliance depends on how each instance operator configures and runs their server. Since PeerTube is self-hosted, the operator — not Framasoft — is the data controller. Framasoft provides guidance, but compliance is the operator's legal responsibility.
Yes. PeerTube uses ActivityPub, the same protocol as Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Lemmy. Mastodon users can follow PeerTube channels from their Mastodon account and receive video updates in their timeline, without needing a separate PeerTube account.