Simple, broadcast-grade licensing
Bilbycast is open for self-service deployment. Edge and relay ship under AGPL 3, and bilbycast-manager ships under the bilbycast-manager EULA with a free Community tier for up to ten managed nodes. Free for self-hosted broadcast operations. Commercial terms are available when you need a support SLA, more than 10 manager nodes, or redistribution rights.
Edge & Relay
Free and open source. Run unlimited edges and relays in your plant. Commercial support is available for production deployments that need defined response times or OEM redistribution rights.
Self-host bilbycast-edge and bilbycast-relay under AGPL 3. Every protocol, transcoder, FEC, and 2022-7 feature is in the default build — no paywalled capabilities.
- Unlimited edge nodes and relay servers
- SRT, RIST, RTP/UDP, RTMP, RTSP, HLS, CMAF / CMAF-LL, WebRTC, SMPTE ST 2110-20/-22/-30/-31/-40
- Full audio + video transcoding stack (AGPL default, or *-full release with GPL encoders)
- SMPTE 2022-7 hitless redundancy, FEC, end-to-end tunnel encryption
- Prometheus metrics, NMOS IS-04/05/08, BCP-004 receiver capabilities
- Community support — GitHub Issues & Discussions
AGPL 3 kicks in only if you modify edge/relay and offer the modified version as a network service to third parties. Self-hosted broadcast operations — including revenue-generating ones — are unaffected.
Production-grade support with defined response times, named escalation engineers, and priority access to bug fixes and hot-patches.
- Everything in Community
- SLAs from business-hours to 24×7 broadcast-critical
- Named escalation engineers who know the Bilbycast internals
- Priority bug fixes and private hot-patches
- Interop validation against your specific third-party encoders, decoders, and gateways
- Optional AGPL commercial exemption for OEMs embedding edge/relay in closed-source products
Need the full support + OEM catalogue? See the Services page.
Manager
Free for up to 10 managed nodes. Commercial licence for larger fleets, production support, and OEM / redistribution use.
Self-host bilbycast-manager under the free Community tier of the bilbycast-manager End-User Licence Agreement (EULA). Suitable for evaluation, small plants, and teams running Bilbycast for their own broadcast operation — up to ten managed nodes, no fee, no time limit on the licence itself.
- Up to 10 managed nodes (edges + relays combined)
- Full management UI — topology view, flow config, real-time stats, thumbnails
- Live Switcher — PGM/PVW director console with Take, presets, and per-tenant pages
- Routines — cron-scheduled flow automation with DST-correct IANA timezones
- Multi-tenant Groups with per-tenant logo + brand-colour theming (white-label out of the box)
- On-edge Media Library — browser upload of slates, loops, and emergency-fallback content
- AI-assisted flow configuration (OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini)
- NMOS IS-04/05/08 visibility and control plane integration
- Driver-aware integration with third-party broadcast devices
- MFA (TOTP) for local accounts; envelope-encrypted secrets at rest with one-shot master-key rotation
- Community support — GitHub Issues & Discussions
The Community tier lets you self-host and use the manager for your own broadcast operations, including operations done on behalf of your clients. It does not permit offering the manager as a hosted / managed / SaaS service to third parties, embedding it in an appliance or product you deliver to third parties, or circumventing the licence-key and node-count enforcement. For those cases see Enterprise / OEM. Full terms: EULA at bilbycast.com/eula.
Manage larger fleets with a commercial licence plus production support. A single vendor relationship covering manager, edge, and relay.
- Everything in Community
- Higher managed-node allowance
- OIDC Single Sign-On with optional tenant-aware group sync (licensed feature)
- Encrypted backup & restore — portable application-level export plus DR-grade pg_dump archive (licensed feature)
- Business-hours or 24×7 SLA — your choice
- Named escalation engineers and private hot-patches
- Priority bug fixes and migration assistance on upgrades
- Private upgrade cadence aligned to your maintenance windows
- Interop validation with your existing plant equipment
For broadcasters running 24×7 critical infrastructure and vendors embedding Bilbycast inside their own appliance or hosted service.
- Everything in Commercial
- Active/Active HA — two manager instances against a shared Postgres 18 cluster, with cross-instance pubsub and per-region observability (licensed feature)
- 24×7 broadcast-critical SLA with a dedicated engineer
- Redistribution rights beyond the EULA default — host the manager as a service, ship it inside an appliance
- AGPL commercial exemption for edge + relay when bundled in closed-source products
- Managed deployment option — we run it on your behalf
- Custom integration, training, and certification
Every tier ships the same engine
There is no feature gating on the transport or transcoding side. SRT, RIST, ST 2110, FEC, SMPTE 2022-7 hitless redundancy, audio and video transcoding, WebRTC distribution, and AI-assisted flow configuration are all in the default builds. The commercial line is about licensing rights and support obligations, not unlocking features. Evaluate the platform at full capability before talking to sales.
Frequently asked questions
What does AGPL 3 mean for my broadcast plant?
Self-hosted use inside your own facility — including for commercial, revenue-generating broadcasts — is fully covered by AGPL 3. The copyleft obligation kicks in only if you modify edge or relay and then offer the modified version as a network service to third parties. If you just run the official binaries, you have nothing to publish.
How is bilbycast-manager licensed?
bilbycast-manager is proprietary software published by Softside Tech Pty Ltd under the bilbycast-manager End-User Licence Agreement (EULA). The EULA Community tier lets you self-host and use the manager for your own broadcast operations (including operations you run on behalf of your clients) up to ten managed nodes, at no charge. It does not permit offering the manager as a hosted / managed / SaaS service to third parties, embedding it in an appliance or product you deliver to third parties, or circumventing the licence-key and node-count enforcement. For use beyond those limits, a Commercial or Enterprise / OEM licence is available under a separate Order. Full terms: bilbycast.com/eula.
How is a "managed node" counted?
Every edge node and every relay server connected to a single manager instance counts as one managed node. Ten edges and zero relays is ten nodes. Seven edges and three relays is also ten nodes.
What is community support?
Public GitHub Issues and Discussions on the Bilbycast repositories. Best-effort responses from maintainers, no SLA, no guaranteed turnaround. Great for learning and non-critical deployments.
Can I start on Community and upgrade later?
Yes. The config files, the binaries, and the WebSocket protocol are identical across tiers. A commercial licence removes the 10-node cap and adds a support contract — no migration, no re-install, no config change.
Do I need a commercial licence to use Bilbycast for a paid broadcast?
No. Running edge, relay, and manager for your own broadcast operation — including revenue-generating broadcasts — is fully covered by the free AGPL 3 terms (edge, relay) and the free Community tier of the bilbycast-manager EULA. Commercial licences are for teams that need a support SLA, more than 10 manager nodes, or the right to redistribute the software inside their own product or as a hosted service.
Not sure which tier fits?
Tell us about your plant, your channel count, and your SLA expectations — we'll recommend the right licence and support level. Evaluation and proof-of-concept deployments are welcome.