RTMP Versus WebRTC. Which One To Choose? (2021 Report)

Are you looking to start a new live-streaming project and you currently don’t know which technologies (RTMP or WebRTC) to choose?

Do you want to make sure that you’re choosing a long term solution?

Do you want to make sure that you won’t need to change technologies and re-write your platform?

Then this article is for you. Let’s get right into it!

1. RTMP
   - It’s a very old protocol developed by Macromedia, acquired by Adobe and was mostly used in Flash applications
   - Has been around for over 2 decades
   - Is currently a mainstream protocol used by major blue-chip companies, like Facebook, Youtube, Amazon
   - Has a lot of tools, implementations and ecosystem built around it
   - Has various flavours, like RTMPS (encrypted) and RTMPT (HTTP tunnelling)
   - Has a latency of at least 0.2s or more, depending on quality settings, cache etc.
   - Is often associated with Flash which doesn’t have a good reputation, even though they have nothing in common and are two separate things

2. WebRTC
- It’s a very new and high-tech protocol that is slowly gaining popularity
- Has been implemented in the main browsers in the past 2–3 years
- UDP based, low latency; Also implements a low-latency messaging system based on Websockets; We can actually call it real-time or ultra-low latency.
- Each browser follows its own API which unfortunately do not follow the W3C standards
- Browsers still make changes and update their APIs which sometimes cause functionality issues and urgent changes

Ok, but I still don’t understand. Which one should I pick? Which one is good for me?

Are you looking to run a business that handles pay per minute or real-time billing?
Do you need to use a mixer and broadcast professional streams?
Do you need to broadcast 24x7 from embedded devices?
Do your streams gather a large audience of thousands or tens of thousands or even more concurrent users?
Do you need to use a CDN?
Do you have a global audience?
Do you also need to stream to Facebook and Youtube?

Then the answer is RTMP.
With RTMP you can benefit from the entire CDN infrastructure, from the mature and stable software ecosystem that’s there, from the load balancing features that you have. You also get a lot of professional streaming tools, like the ability to use professional mixers or OBS.

Are you looking for low latency one-to-one or many-to-many applications, like video conferencing?
Are you looking to avoid the installation by your users of any 3rd party apps?
Are you looking to implement streaming in your app very fast?

Then WebRTC is the way to go. Everything happens in the browser, it’s free to use and quick to implement.

Here, at Streamaxia, we provide tools for both RTMP and WebRTC platforms. Contact us today at contact@streamaxia.com and get a free consultation over which one to use. We have ready to run tools, software and platforms that will expedite your time to market.