# Wowza review (2026): is it worth $195 a month? > Streaming server software you run yourself, plus a cloud platform Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. Wowza sells live and on-demand video streaming infrastructure. Wowza Streaming Engine is a server you run on your own hardware or cloud account, and Wowza Video is its managed cloud platform with its own player. It is aimed at developers and organizations building streaming into their own services, not at people who want a ready-made webinar room. - **Category:** Webinars & Live Streaming - **Made by:** Wowza Media Systems, LLC (since 2007) - **Website:** https://www.wowza.com - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Pricey if you stream occasionally: $195 a month, or $295 for a single month. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, Wowza is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $195 per month for Streaming Engine, billed monthly. - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** Free trial for Streaming Engine and for Wowza Video; the page does not state its length. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | One Month of Streaming | $295 one-time purchase for one month, first instance included | Streaming Engine for occasional events: up to 10 concurrent transcoded channels on the first instance, extra instances $295 each. | | Basic Monthly | $195 per month, billed monthly, first instance included | Streaming Engine for steady use: up to 10 concurrent transcoded channels on the first instance, extra instances $195 each per month. | | Enterprise | Custom | Annual plans and discounted rates, hybrid cloud services (CDN, Flowplayer, analytics), offline keys and professional services. | | Perpetual | Custom | A license with no expiration for containerized, air-gapped or self-hosted deployments, scoped and quoted by Wowza. | Read from https://www.wowza.com/pricing on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Wowza before buying. ## Key features - **Self-hosted streaming server:** Wowza Streaming Engine runs on premises, in a private or public cloud, behind a firewall or fully offline, and can be deployed as a Docker container. - **Many protocols:** It ingests and delivers WebRTC, SRT, RTMP, RTSP and HLS, and supports low-latency HLS and DASH. - **APIs and SDKs:** A REST API and a Java SDK let developers script the server and add custom modules. - **Transcoding:** Each paid Streaming Engine instance includes 10 concurrent transcoded channels; extra channels are $25 each. - **Security options:** DRM, watermarking and encryption are offered, and the company says it holds a SOC 2 Type II report. - **Managed cloud option:** Wowza Video is a separate cloud platform that handles ingest, transcoding, delivery, analytics and a player without running servers. ## Good for - Developers building live video into their own app or service - Organizations that need streaming on their own servers or offline - Teams that want to choose their own encoder, CDN and player ## Worth knowing - It is infrastructure, not a webinar tool: there is no registration page, polls or attendee chat out of the box. - Additional transcoded channels cost $25 each beyond the 10 included per instance. - Wowza Video, the managed cloud product, is priced separately; this listing records the Streaming Engine plans shown on the pricing page. - Perpetual and Enterprise licenses are quoted by sales, with no published price. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 1.4 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Wowza makes streaming server software you run yourself, plus a cloud platform. It starts at $195 a month, and there is no registration, polls or chat, so it is infrastructure for engineers rather than a webinar tool. - **Value for money: D.** $195 a month for Streaming Engine, right at the dearest tenth of the category ($195 and up). One month costs $295. - **Free plan and trial: D.** A free trial is offered but its length is not stated, and there is no free plan. - **Features: D.** It is infrastructure: it streams and transcodes video, but gives no registration, polls or attendee chat, so you build the rest. - **Ease of use: D.** A server product that needs setup and configuration, with no rating on record. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web platform listed, with RTMP, SRT, HLS, WebRTC, Docker and an API. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Wowza's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among webinar and live streaming tools - Wowza's GPA of 1.4 is higher than 1 of the 60 other webinar and live streaming tools we grade, and level with 1. - It stands best on platforms and integrations (B, above 20 of 60) and worst on features (D, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $195 a month, against a middle price of $47 for the category: 42 of the 45 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 1.7 out of 4. 38 tools score higher and cost less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/webinars ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** Nothing Wowza does is plain enough to make in a weekend. The 2 things listed below take a company. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 58 of the 60 other webinar and live streaming tools grade higher. It costs $2,340 a year. - You could not: It plugs into other products, WebRTC, SRT and RTMP among them, and has an API. - You could not: What a company asks for before it lets staff use something: SOC 2. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with WebRTC, SRT, RTMP, HLS, Docker **Tags:** Public API, Self-hostable ## Alternatives - [Dacast](https://toolgpa.com/tools/dacast): Live streaming and video hosting with bandwidth-based plans. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/dacast-vs-wowza) - [Castr](https://toolgpa.com/tools/castr): Multistreaming, video hosting and 24/7 playout in one service. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/castr-vs-wowza) - [Restream](https://toolgpa.com/tools/restream): Multistream one live video to YouTube, Twitch, LinkedIn and more. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/restream-vs-wowza) - [BoxCast](https://toolgpa.com/tools/boxcast): Live streaming platform with encoders, captions and OTT apps. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/boxcast-vs-wowza) - [vMix](https://toolgpa.com/tools/vmix): Windows live video production and streaming software. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/vmix-vs-wowza) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://www.wowza.com/pricing - https://www.wowza.com/streaming-engine - https://www.wowza.com/company Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/wowza Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).