Kinescope logoKinescope vs Dacast:
DRM from €10, billed monthly

Dacast is a live streaming platform with a built-in paywall, but DRM starts on its $165-a-month Scale plan, overage costs $0.30 per GB and the lower plans are billed annually. Kinescope includes Widevine and FairPlay, per-viewer watermarks, 4K and EU storage from €10 a month, billed monthly.

Key differentiators

DRM from €10, not from the Scale plan

Dacast offers Widevine and FairPlay only for on-demand video, and only on its Scale plan and above — $165 a month billed annually, or $250 billed monthly. Kinescope includes Widevine and FairPlay on every paid plan from €10 a month.

No $0.30 overage, no streams switched off

Beyond its allowance, Dacast charges $0.30 per GB of bandwidth, and without overage protection your streams shut off. Kinescope bills delivery from €0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB as you grow, with no allowance to run out of.

Monthly on every plan

Dacast’s Starter and Event plans are billed annually, and the one monthly option, Scale, comes with a three-month minimum. Kinescope bills every plan monthly, with no minimum term.

A watermark per viewer, not just a logo

Dacast shows your logo in the player or burns a watermark into on-demand video. Kinescope adds a dynamic watermark with the viewer’s e-mail or ID, so a leaked recording points to the account it came from.

Live in 5–10 seconds, not 15–30

Dacast puts typical end-to-end live latency at 15 to 30 seconds and doesn’t offer Low-Latency HLS. Kinescope keeps live streams at 5–10 seconds over RTMP, with an automatic recording.

Data in the EU by default

Dacast keeps video and account data on North American infrastructure by default. Kinescope stores video in EU data centres by default and is a Dutch company, Kinescope B.V.

Comparison at a glance

Billing
Monthly from €10; no minimum term
Starter and Event billed annually; monthly Scale has a 3-month minimum
Delivery price
€0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB with volume
Plan allowance, then $0.30/GB
DRM (Widevine + FairPlay)
Included from €10/month
VOD only, Scale plan ($165/mo) and above
Watermarking
Dynamic, per viewer
Logo overlay; burned-in watermark for VOD
Maximum quality
Up to 4K
1080p; 4K ABR on request for enterprise
Live latency
5–10 s over RTMP
Typically 15–30 s; no LL-HLS
Live ingest
RTMP, RTMPS, SRT
RTMP, SRT, WebRTC (WHIP)
Video API
REST API, SDKs and webhooks on every paid plan
Scale and Custom plans
Paywall (PPV, subscriptions)
Not built in
Built in, 9.9% + $0.40 per purchase
Where data lives
North American infrastructure by default
Uptime SLA
99.98% target, financial SLA on Mega
99.9% monthly, credits up to one month’s fees
Try before you pay
Free plan: 100 min + 200 GB/month, no card
14-day trial, 10 GB of bandwidth

Moving off Dacast? Our team brings the library across

We bring your on-demand videos and recordings over at no cost on the Super and Mega plans, and your encoders only need a new RTMP, RTMPS or SRT address. Your Dacast embeds stay live until the Kinescope embeds are tested. Hands-on EN/PT support throughout.

When to choose

Choose Kinescope if you need:

Widevine and FairPlay DRM and per-viewer watermarks from the first paid plan, live at 5–10 seconds, adaptive streams up to 4K, the API on every paid plan, data in the EU by default and monthly billing without a minimum term.

Choose Dacast if you need:

A paywall for pay-per-view and subscriptions inside the player, ad-supported streams with VAST, restreaming to YouTube and Facebook from one dashboard, delivery into mainland China, or 24/7 support on the cheapest plan.

Meet Kinescope: video hosting with protection built in

DRM from day one

Widevine and FairPlay on every paid plan from €10 a month — no add-on fee and no per-license charge — plus dynamic per-viewer watermarking, signed links and domain restrictions.

API, SDKs and MCP

A REST API, 7 webhook event types, open-source SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter, React, React Native, Vue and Angular, and an MCP server that lets AI agents search and edit videos and manage live streams.

Our own CDN

Our own infrastructure, not resold AWS or Cloudflare, covering Latin America, the US, Europe and the CIS, with a 99.98% monthly uptime target.

Live streaming

Go live over RTMP, RTMPS or SRT from OBS, vMix or a hardware encoder, keep an automatic recording, and let live-stream webhooks tell your backend when the encoder connects.

A video library for the whole team

Editors upload, organise and publish in the dashboard — projects, folders, playlists, player templates, AI subtitles and chapters — while your code works with the same videos over the API.

One predictable price

Plans from €10 a month with pay-as-you-go usage: delivery from €0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB, storage from €0.03/GB, processing €0.01 per minute once. No per-seat fees and no annual contract.

Trusted by more than 9,500 clients in 84 countries and counting.

Try Kinescope free — 100 minutes + 200 GB/month, no card required

FAQ

Can’t find the answer you need? Check out our Help Center.

For teams that protect paid or private video, Kinescope: Widevine and FairPlay DRM and per-viewer watermarks on every paid plan from €10 a month, live at 5–10 seconds over RTMP, RTMPS and SRT, adaptive streams up to 4K, EU storage by default and monthly billing on every plan. If you need a built-in paywall for pay-per-view or subscriptions, Dacast has one and Kinescope doesn’t.

Dacast’s plan cards list Starter at $39 a month and Event at $63 a month, both billed annually, and Scale at $165 a month billed annually or $250 billed monthly with a three-month minimum. Beyond the plan’s allowance, bandwidth costs $0.30 per GB and storage $0.15 per GB (dacast.com, November 2026). Kinescope bills monthly from €10: delivery from €0.03/GB down to €0.01/GB, storage from €0.03/GB and €0.01 per minute of processing, once — see pricing.

Yes, but only for on-demand video and only on the Scale plan and above: Dacast supports Widevine and FairPlay there (Dacast knowledge base). Below Scale, video is protected with tokens, domain and geo restrictions and passwords. Kinescope includes Widevine and FairPlay on every paid plan from €10 a month — see DRM video hosting.

Dacast describes typical end-to-end latency in the 15–30 second range and says Low-Latency HLS is not part of its delivery stack (Dacast blog, July 2026). Kinescope keeps live latency at 5–10 seconds over RTMP — see live streaming.