Crowdcast vs Livestorm
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentCrowdcast compared with Livestorm
Both are browser-based and both refuse to make attendees install anything. Livestorm is the more polished B2B tool with better CRM integration and a billing model based on actual attendance. Crowdcast is the creator tool with native ticketing, Patreon gating, and overage rather than a lock-out. A marketing team should take Livestorm; a person selling seats to their own live workshop should take Crowdcast.
Choose Crowdcast if
Creators, educators, coaches, authors, and community-led small businesses who run live workshops, classes, and recurring community sessions, especially those selling tickets to those sessions and those whose attendance varies enough that a hard room cap is a real business risk.
Choose Livestorm if
European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Crowdcast | Livestorm |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Webinars | Webinars |
| Starting price | $49 per month (Lite); annual billing saves 30 percent (14 days trial) | Pro at approximately 2.50 euros per attendee credit; third-party trackers report an entry block around 105 euros per month (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Monthly tiers bundling live-attendee capacity, streaming hours, team seats, and storage, plus a transaction fee on ticket sales and metered overage on attendees and hours. | Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | 14 days with all features and integrations, limited to 60-minute sessions and 10 live attendees | A trial is available on request through the signup flow; Livestorm does not publish a fixed trial length on the pricing page |
| Best for | Creators, educators, coaches, authors, and community-led small businesses who run live workshops, classes, and recurring community sessions, especially those selling tickets to those sessions and those whose attendance varies enough that a hard room cap is a real business risk. | European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence. |
| Setup time | Under an hour. Create a channel, schedule an event, connect Stripe if you are ticketing, and you are live. The Gallery makes the first dry run genuinely easy rather than an act of faith. | Under an hour for a first event. Create the event, choose the format, restyle the registration page, edit the reminder emails, and connect your CRM. There is no software rollout and nothing for attendees to prepare, so the usual pre-launch IT work simply does not exist. |
| Learning curve | Low. Crowdcast is one of the least intimidating live platforms to host on, and the audience side requires nothing beyond clicking a link. The only part with real depth is RTMP ingest from OBS, which is optional and follows standard streaming conventions. | Low for the basic live event. The parts that take practice are the automated event mode, the role and permission model in a larger workspace, and the analytics export, which is powerful but not self-explanatory. |
| Platforms | Browser-based for hosts and attendees on desktop and mobile, RTMP ingest from OBS, Wirecast, and Ecamm Live | Web browser (attendees and presenters, desktop and mobile), iFrame embed on your own site, RTMP simulcast to YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and custom endpoints |
| Compliance | GDPR handling for registrant data, PCI handled by Stripe for ticketing, No public SOC 2 report advertised | ISO 27001, GDPR |
| Founded | 2015 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | Oakland, California, United States | Paris, France (fully remote team) |
| Ownership | Privately held, founder-led | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Crowdcast
Strengths
- Overage billing instead of a hard attendee cap, which is a structurally kinder failure mode than every mainstream competitor in this category and removes the worst risk in webinar planning.
- Native Stripe ticketing with a falling transaction fee, so paid workshops and classes work end to end without a second platform.
- Instant replay on the same event page attendees already have, with chat and timestamped Q and A intact, so the recording is genuinely useful rather than an orphaned video file.
- The Gallery green room is the best pre-flight experience in the category, and it prevents the most common category of live-event disaster.
Limitations
- Streaming hours are metered monthly, so a heavy month costs extra even if attendance is modest, and no competitor at this price meters airtime the same way.
- Maximum session length is capped at two hours on Lite, four on Pro, and six on Business, which rules out full-day events on anything but the top plan.
- No SSO, no published SOC 2 report, and no data residency options, which will end an enterprise security review before it starts.
- CRM integration is Zapier and CSV rather than native Salesforce, HubSpot, or Marketo objects, so attendance-driven lead scoring requires building the pipeline yourself.
Livestorm
Strengths
- Genuinely zero-install for both attendees and presenters, which lifts attendance rates and removes the most common day-of-event support ticket.
- Attendee-credit billing means no-shows are free, which is a real saving in a category where more than half of registrants routinely fail to attend.
- Unlimited team members at no additional cost, so a large marketing organization does not pay per host.
- Live, on-demand, and automated formats are all first-class rather than one of them being a token feature.
Limitations
- The pricing page publishes no flat monthly number and no free plan, so building a budget requires a conversation or a configuration exercise rather than reading a table.
- Running out of attendee credits blocks new joiners mid-session rather than billing you for the overage, which is an unusually harsh failure mode.
- Replay and on-demand views consume credits, which quietly makes evergreen content more expensive than it looks.
- Production control is thin compared with a studio tool: no scene composition, no multi-camera switching, no high-bitrate local recording.
Pricing compared
Crowdcast
Monthly tiers bundling live-attendee capacity, streaming hours, team seats, and storage, plus a transaction fee on ticket sales and metered overage on attendees and hours.
- Lite$49
- Pro$89
- Business$195
Crowdcast is not the cheapest webinar tool and it is not trying to be. Lite at 49 dollars for a hundred attendees and ten hours a month looks poor next to Demio Starter or Zoho Webinar until you account for what those tools do not include: native ticketing, overage instead of a locked door, an instant replay page that keeps its chat, and Patreon gating. For a creator selling access to live sessions, Crowdcast replaces a webinar tool plus a checkout plus a replay host, and the two percent ticket fee on Business is competitive with what a standalone ticketing platform would charge before you even count the streaming. For a B2B marketing team that will never sell a ticket, most of that value is dead weight and the money is better spent on Demio or Livestorm.
Livestorm
Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing.
- ProAbout 2.50 euros per attendee credit
- EnterpriseCustom quote
Livestorm is good value when your no-show rate is high and your attendance is uneven, and poor value when it is neither. Paying only for people who turned up is genuinely fairer than a seat licence with a fixed room cap, and the unlimited team members clause means a twenty-person marketing org pays the same as a solo operator for the same audience. The catch is forecasting. A quote-free per-credit model turns your webinar bill into a variable cost that rises exactly when a campaign works, and the hard block when credits run out during a live session is a worse failure mode than an overage invoice. If you can predict your annual attendee volume within twenty percent, buy the credits and the economics beat Demio or Zoom at similar volume. If you cannot, a capped per-seat platform will be less stressful even if it is nominally more expensive.
Editorial verdict on each
Crowdcast
Crowdcast is a live event platform for people who sell access to their own sessions, and it is unusually well designed for that job. Native Stripe ticketing, Patreon gating, an instant replay page that keeps its chat and timestamped Q and A, the Gallery green room, and RTMP ingest for when you want real production add up to a coherent tool for creators, educators, and community-led businesses. Its best feature is not on any comparison chart: it bills you 15 cents per extra attendee instead of locking the door, which makes it the only mainstream option in this category where an unexpectedly successful event costs money rather than costing you the audience. The limits are equally clear: metered streaming hours, short session caps on the cheaper plans, a 1,000-attendee ceiling, no SSO or SOC 2, and CRM integration that stops at Zapier. Buy it if the live room is your product. Buy something else if the live room is your marketing.
Read the full Crowdcast profileLivestorm
Category LeaderLivestorm is the best browser-first webinar platform for a marketing team that treats webinars as a lead channel rather than a big meeting, and the attendee-credit model is the fairest billing structure in the category for anyone whose no-show rate is typical. Zero-install attendance is not a marketing line; it measurably changes how many registrants become attendees. Buy it if you run a steady program with volatile attendance, have many occasional hosts, and want EU hosting with ISO 27001 behind it. Think twice if you need a fixed, forecastable monthly cost, because credits that run out block joiners mid-session, or if your strategy is really an evergreen funnel, in which case a dedicated automation tool will do more for less.
Read the full Livestorm profileCrowdcast profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Livestorm last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in Webinars & Virtual Events
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Live webinars for single-digit dollars per organizer, if you can live inside Zoho.
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Fifteen minutes from signup to a first broadcast with nothing to install and guests joining by a single link make StreamYard the easiest live tool here.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Crowdcast and Livestorm?
Both are browser-based and both refuse to make attendees install anything. Livestorm is the more polished B2B tool with better CRM integration and a billing model based on actual attendance. Crowdcast is the creator tool with native ticketing, Patreon gating, and overage rather than a lock-out. A marketing team should take Livestorm; a person selling seats to their own live workshop should take Crowdcast.
Is Crowdcast or Livestorm cheaper?
Crowdcast starts at $49 per month (Lite); annual billing saves 30 percent (14 days trial). Livestorm starts at Pro at approximately 2.50 euros per attendee credit; third-party trackers report an entry block around 105 euros per month (free trial). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Crowdcast pricing model: Monthly tiers bundling live-attendee capacity, streaming hours, team seats, and storage, plus a transaction fee on ticket sales and metered overage on attendees and hours. Livestorm pricing model: Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing.
Does Crowdcast or Livestorm have a free plan?
Crowdcast has no free plan. Trial terms: 14 days with all features and integrations, limited to 60-minute sessions and 10 live attendees. Livestorm has no free plan. Trial terms: A trial is available on request through the signup flow; Livestorm does not publish a fixed trial length on the pricing page.
Who should choose Crowdcast?
Creators, educators, coaches, authors, and community-led small businesses who run live workshops, classes, and recurring community sessions, especially those selling tickets to those sessions and those whose attendance varies enough that a hard room cap is a real business risk.
Who should choose Livestorm?
European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence.
What are the best alternatives to Crowdcast and Livestorm?
SaaSTracker profiles 17 products in Webinars & Virtual Events. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Zoho Meeting (Best Value), Luma (Momentum), Contrast (Innovation). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
