Restream vs StreamYard: Send Everywhere or Host the Guests

The short answer: under one show a week with a single guest, the difference between these two is not features but which plan your company is allowed to buy. StreamYard reserves its cheaper plans for individuals and puts companies on Business at $299 a month, or $249 billed yearly (StreamYard pricing, Plan Usage Policy); Restream's Business plan is $239 a month, or $2,390 a year (Restream pricing), both checked on 26 October 2026. Choose StreamYard if your job is the interview itself: guests who join from a link, clean recordings of each person, and a webinar room on your site. Choose Restream if your job is distribution: one feed, produced in its Studio or in any encoder, sent to 8 channels with the chat gathered in one place.

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What to settle on paper:

1. The year, not the month. For example, StreamYard Business billed yearly is $249 x 12 = $2,988; Restream Business billed yearly is $2,390, so StreamYard costs $598 more for a company that stays all year (StreamYard pricing, Restream pricing).
2. The way you produce today. If someone already runs OBS, vMix or another encoder, Restream takes that feed through its encoder integrations (Restream pricing). If the show is two people talking in a browser and nobody wants to touch an encoder, that is StreamYard's home ground.
3. How many destinations you post to. Restream Business sends to 8 channels at once; StreamYard Business to 10 (Restream pricing, StreamYard multistream guide). Count your company pages and channels before you count features.
4. What you will report. Live viewers per platform for each episode, plus the replays watched in the week after, recorded the same way for both tools.

Feature by feature, with the page that says so

Checked on 26 October 2026.

The three things that decide it

Who may buy which plan

StreamYard's policy says Free, Core and Advanced are for personal use or for individuals working with it, such as freelancers, and that business plans are for small businesses and large organisations, with suspension possible for use outside a plan's purpose (Plan Usage Policy). The Restream pricing page read for this comparison attaches no such label to Standard or Professional; the Restream entry records a second version, served earlier the same day, that does. Read the plan rules before the price list. For a company, they are the price list.

Guests first, or feeds first

StreamYard was built around the guest: the Greenroom on Business lets a host check a guest's setup privately before the studio, and each person's audio and video is recorded on their own device (Business plan update, homepage). Restream was built around the feed: it does not care whether the picture comes from its Studio, OBS or an uploaded file, and its chat merges the comments from every platform (pricing). An interview show leans one way. A launch aired from a finished film leans the other.

What the edit needs afterwards

StreamYard hands an editor a project file with every local recording already aligned on the timeline (export guide). Restream keeps cloud recordings for 15 days on Standard and Professional and 30 on Business, so somebody has to download them in time (pricing). If the recording becomes a podcast, that hand-off decides more than the live hour.

What each costs, month and year

US dollars, checked on 26 October 2026 on the Restream and StreamYard pricing pages. Restream Professional appears because the version of its page read here does not restrict it to individuals. StreamYard adds that its prices may vary with promotions and renewal terms.

After the show, a recap drafted by an assistant

Restream's MCP server, free with any Restream account, lets Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor pull a finished stream's transcript, its full chat log, viewer numbers by platform and a clips project (Restream MCP FAQ). The morning after an episode, ask for three things: show notes drafted from the transcript, the chat exported as a list of the audience's questions, and a clips project created from the recording.

The human check: the host reads the show notes against the recording, with every name, figure and product claim confirmed before anything is posted, and picks which audience questions get an answer on LinkedIn. The FAQ adds that the assistant cannot post in chat, and a long stream should be summarised in parts so it fits the assistant's context. StreamYard's AI lives inside its library instead, cutting captioned vertical clips from each recording (AI clips guide).

The renewal that changes the plan

Start a company show on StreamYard Core and the default outcome arrives at renewal. Its own update article says qualifying accounts move to the Business plan price at their next renewal date, with reminder emails 30 and 15 days before (Business plan update). Budget for Business from day one, or you are budgeting for a surprise.

A free rehearsal of each

StreamYard Free puts 6 people on screen with its logo and limits streaming hours each month; Restream Free sends to 2 channels with Restream branding (StreamYard pricing, free plan limits, Restream pricing). Record one guest conversation on StreamYard Free, then stream a rehearsal through Restream Free to two unlisted destinations. Time the setup in each and note where the guest got stuck.

Which one, for which job

Choose StreamYard if your job is a recurring interview or panel with outside guests, where the recording of each person and a webinar room on your site matter, and Business is in the budget.

Choose Restream if your job is getting one feed onto many platforms, from a studio, an encoder or a finished file, with the chat in one place and an assistant to schedule and recap it.

Background on each: the Restream and StreamYard entries. StreamYard against a webinar platform built to sell is covered in WebinarJam vs StreamYard.

FAQ

Can StreamYard send one stream to two LinkedIn pages?

No. Its multistream guide says LinkedIn does not support streaming to several accounts at once, though other platforms do (multistream guide).

Does Restream need extra bandwidth for more destinations?

No. Its pricing FAQ says you do not need additional bandwidth even when streaming to 30 destinations at once (Restream pricing).

How many extra seats can StreamYard Business take?

Up to 1,000, added from My Account, then Billing, then Manage seats, with the price per seat shown there (Business plan details).