Set up your own server

What self-hosting means here

Every bonded stream needs a server in the middle. Your phones send their pieces of the stream to it, it reassembles them into one clean feed, and it forwards that to Twitch, Kick, or wherever you are going.

Usually that server lives in a data centre and you rent it by the hour. Self-hosting means running it yourself instead — on a Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Apple TV sitting at home.

If you have read about self-hosting elsewhere, set your expectations aside. There is no cloud account to create, no virtual machine to configure, nothing to install from a command line. You are turning a device you already own into the server.

Before you start

Check your upload speed

This is the one thing that decides whether self-hosting will work for you, and it is worth two minutes before anything else.

Your stream arrives at the device in your house and then has to go back out to the platform — over your home internet's upload. Home connections are usually sold on download speed, and upload is often a small fraction of it. A connection advertised at 300 Mbps might have 10 Mbps up.

Run any speed test at home and look at the upload number. You want more than 10 Mbps. The server currently sends out at around 7 Mbps, so 10 gives you room. If your upload is below that, use a cloud server instead — self-hosting will not work well and no setting will fix it.

Think about who else is using the internet

Headroom matters as much as the raw number. If somebody at home is uploading a large backup or on a video call while you stream, they are competing for the same upload capacity your stream needs. A connection that tests fine at 2pm can struggle at 8pm.

Use ethernet if you can

Plug the device into your router with a cable rather than leaving it on Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi adds variability you do not want in the one part of the chain that is supposed to be the stable part. This is our strongest recommendation on this page after checking your upload speed.

Which device to use

Any of these work. More processing power is better, so in order:

1. Apple Silicon Mac — the best choice. Most headroom, and it is probably already plugged in with an ethernet option nearby.
2. iPad Pro — very capable, easy to leave in a corner on a charger.
3. iPhone Pro Max — works well. A good use for a previous phone you have kept.
4. Apple TV — the lightest of the four, but it is always plugged in and usually already on ethernet, which makes it convenient.

If you have an older device sitting unused, that is exactly what this feature is for. It does not need to be your newest hardware — it needs to be plugged in, on a stable connection, and left alone while you stream.

Setting it up

First time only. After this, starting the server is one button.

1. Plug the device into power and, ideally, into your router with an ethernet cable.
2. Download the app on that device.
3. Press Start Server. The device switches itself into keep-awake mode automatically, so it will not go to sleep partway through your stream.
4. Give the server a name — something you will recognise later, like "Home Mac". Worth doing now if you might run more than one.
5. Press Show Server QR to display the code.
6. Scan it with your streaming phone. That hands over the server ID so your phone knows where to send the stream.

Once scanned, a new option appears on your streaming phone alongside cloud server and private cloud server. Select your self-hosted server and you are done.

The two lights

The server screen shows a LAN light and a WAN light. Between them they tell you exactly how far setup got.

LAN light

The device started successfully as a server on your home network

WAN light

It configured port forwarding on your router, so your phone can reach it from outside

Both lit

Everything worked. Go stream.

LAN on, WAN off

The server is running, but your router has not opened the path in from outside — so your phone will not reach it once you leave the house. Almost always this means UPnP is disabled on the router. It is usually in the router's settings under a name like UPnP, NAT, or port forwarding, and turning it on then restarting the server fixes it.

Some internet providers disable UPnP or use network setups that prevent it working at all. If you cannot get the WAN light on after enabling UPnP, that is worth contacting support about rather than guessing.

Neither lit

The server did not start. Check the device is properly on the network — cable seated, or connected to the right Wi-Fi — and try again.

What it actually costs

The first two hours of every session are free. After that it is $0.55 per hour, and there is no charge for data on self-hosted servers.

Here are real sessions from our own dashboard, not estimates:

Billed hours are total hours minus the two free ones. Data is not charged on self-hosted servers.

For comparison, a cloud server is $2.50 per hour plus $0.11 per GB of outbound data. That same 5.49-hour session — the one that cost $1.92 self-hosted — would come to roughly $17 on a cloud server once data is included.

When not to self-host

• Your upload is under 10 Mbps. The clearest case. Use a cloud server.
• Your home internet is unreliable. A connection that drops occasionally is fine for browsing and fatal for a relay.
• You are streaming a long way from home. Your stream travels to your house and then back out to the platform. Streaming from another country to a server in your living room adds distance that a nearby cloud server would not.
• Other people are relying on the connection. Your stream will use a large share of the upload for hours.
• The stream really matters. For paid work, a cloud server in a data centre with proper redundancy is the safer choice, and the cost difference is small next to the consequences.

You do not have to choose permanently. Many people self-host from home and switch to cloud when travelling — both options stay available on the same account.

Common questions

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