Best Self-hosted Alternatives to Twitch

vod2pod-rss converts video-on-demand channels into podcast-ready RSS feeds by extracting audio streams and transcoding to MP3 on the fly. It exposes a simple web UI to generate feed URLs and can transcode streams without persisting VOD files on the host.

Key Features

• Generates standard podcast RSS from YouTube, Twitch or existing RSS/Atom feeds
• On-the-fly MP3 transcoding (default 192 kbps) so no server-side storage of VODs is required
• Simple web UI to paste channel URLs and obtain podcast feed links
• Docker images and Docker Compose support, with builds for arm64/amd64/armv7 (Raspberry Pi supported)
• Optional YouTube and Twitch API key support to increase feed item limits and include channel avatars
• Configurable runtime via environment variables: disable transcoding, change MP3 bitrate, set cache TTL, whitelist domains, and pass extra yt-dlp arguments

Use Cases

• Listen to YouTube/Twitch VODs as a podcast in mobile podcast clients
• Create lower-bitrate audio versions of video channels to save mobile data
• Aggregate multiple channels into podcast apps without downloading or storing source videos

Limitations and Considerations

• Without a YouTube API key the feed is limited to 15 items and channel avatars are not provided
• The service relies on yt-dlp/FFmpeg behavior for extraction and transcoding; upstream changes to those services or to video platforms may break feed generation
• Real-time transcoding can be CPU-intensive on very low-end hardware; although Raspberry Pi 3/4 is supported, performance depends on workload and concurrent streams

vod2pod-rss is a lightweight Rust-based utility for turning video channels into podcast feeds with minimal configuration. It is suited for self-hosted setups using Docker and is configurable for bitrate, caching and API integration.