StreamYard vs Riverside: Live Show First or Recording First

The short answer: if your company's show is recorded first and streamed second, a podcast that sometimes goes live on LinkedIn, Riverside fits and costs less: live streaming starts on Grow at $45 a month on monthly billing, or $34 a month billed yearly, and its pricing page attaches no company-only rule to that plan (Riverside pricing, checked on 26 October 2026). If the live hour is the product, a weekly interview with the audience in the comments and a webinar room on your own site, StreamYard is built for it, and a company pays $299 a month on Business, or $249 billed yearly (StreamYard pricing, Plan Usage Policy). Choose StreamYard if your job is the live show. Choose Riverside if your job is the recording and everything cut from it.

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Before the trial:

1. A year on the plan a company would really be on. For example, Riverside Grow billed yearly is $34 x 12 = $408, and StreamYard Business billed yearly is $249 x 12 = $2,988, a gap of $2,580 a year (Riverside pricing, StreamYard pricing). Riverside's own FAQ gives Grow as $39 before the annual saving, against $45 on the plan card; budget the card.
2. The recordings you already have. StreamYard exports each guest's local recording as an aligned project for Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve (export guide). Riverside caps downloads of separate tracks at 15 hours a month on Pro, 20 on Grow and 25 on Webinar (Riverside pricing). If an outside editor cuts the show, count those hours.
3. Where viewers watch. Riverside streams to unlimited destinations from Grow, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram among them; StreamYard Business to 10 (Riverside pricing, multistream guide).
4. The scoreboard. Views or downloads of the edited episode in its first 30 days, set against live viewers on the day. Whichever is larger tells you which end of the job to pay for.

Stage by stage

Checked on 26 October 2026 against StreamYard pricing, StreamYard's Business plan update, Riverside pricing, the Riverside Agents page and Riverside's live streaming overview.

The deciding differences

A rule about who you are, or a list of what you need

StreamYard decides your plan by who you are: individual plans for personal use or for individuals at work such as freelancers, business plans for small businesses and large organisations (Plan Usage Policy). Riverside decides it by what you need: its FAQ sends you to Business for more than 100 webinar registrants, several producers on one show, SSO, SOC2 or ISO27001 compliance, Salesforce or a dedicated success manager (Riverside pricing). A three-person marketing team with one show may sit on Grow. On StreamYard, the same team is a business.

Live as the product, or live as a source

StreamYard calls itself the easiest way to live stream and record, and sells On-Air, a webinar room you can embed on your own site, for 1,000+ viewers on Business (StreamYard, pricing). Riverside's live page sells the stream as raw material: record it in studio quality, then turn it into "a month of content" with clips, episodes and posts (Riverside live streaming). If the audience on the day is the point, that tilts one way.

Who finishes the recording

Riverside keeps the episode in-house: transcript editing, Magic Clips, show notes, hosting and analytics on Pro (Riverside pricing). StreamYard keeps the clips in-house and hands the long edit to Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or Resolve (export guide). A team with an editor and a desktop timeline loses little on StreamYard. A team without one gains a lot from Riverside.

Prices, plan against plan

US dollars, checked on 26 October 2026 on the Riverside and StreamYard pricing pages. Riverside Business is quoted by sales. StreamYard's Essential, Core and Advanced plans, from $18.99 a month, are marked for individuals only.

Prepping the next webinar with Riverside's agents

Riverside Agents are a set of AI specialists for video: a Producer that preps the session and supports you while recording, an Editor, a Clipper and a Marketer that drafts posts, captions and newsletters (Riverside Agents). The business case on that page is the next webinar: share a brief, and the agents build the registration page, the invites, the run of show and the Q&A. Registration itself needs the Webinar plan, at $99 a month or $79 billed yearly (Riverside pricing).

The human check sits at two gates. Before anything reaches invitees, the producer reads the registration page and the run of show against the brief, with speaker names, the date and the time zone first. After the recording, the host reviews every drafted post; the Agents FAQ says nothing is published until you approve it, and features that run on AI credits still spend them when an agent applies them (Riverside Agents). StreamYard's AI work starts later, with clips cut from the finished recording (AI clips guide).

The card behind the trial

Riverside's free trial runs 14 days on any plan, and it starts with a credit card; nothing is charged until the trial ends (trial article). So day 15 is a paid month on whatever plan and billing period you picked at sign-up, unless someone cancelled. Pick monthly billing for the trial and put the cancellation date in the calendar the same day.

Free first

StreamYard Free records and streams with its logo, 6 people on screen and 2 hours of local recording a month (StreamYard pricing). Record a pilot episode there with one real guest. Then, in Riverside's trial, record the next episode and stream it to LinkedIn from Grow. Compare the two finished cuts, the hours each took from recording to publish, and what the guest said about joining.

Choose by the work

• Choose StreamYard if your job is a live interview or panel where the audience in the comments matters, with webinars embedded on your site, and Business fits the budget.
• Choose Riverside if your job is a recorded series, podcast, customer stories or webinars, edited, clipped and published from one place, with live streaming as an extra.

StreamYard's plans are in its glossary entry. Riverside has no entry; riverside.com is the reference, and Descript vs Riverside covers its editing depth.

FAQ

Can Riverside stream to LinkedIn?

Yes, on Grow, Webinar and Business, from a computer browser; its guide lists LinkedIn beside YouTube, Facebook, X, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram and custom RTMP (multistream guide).

How long can a StreamYard Business recording run?

24 hours per recording, with pre-recorded streams up to 8 hours (Business plan details).

Can I add an editor to Riverside without upgrading?

Yes. Pro, Grow and Webinar sell an extra editor seat as an add-on; collaborative editing and custom roles come with Business (Riverside pricing).