Koel

Self-hosted web music streamer with a modern interface and an optional Koel Plus upgrade.

Open sourceSelf-hostableMedia servers

Verified facts: 4 of 4
Alternatives ranked: 4
Approved reviews: 0
Visits sent from here: 0

About Koel

Koel is a self-hosted music streaming app built with Laravel and a modern JavaScript front end. It focuses on a clean, fast web player inspired by commercial streaming services, with smart playlists and playlist folders, lossless playback, cross-device playback sync, an equalizer and visualizers, podcasts and radio, multiple users and a remote-control mode. It can also serve Subsonic clients, and there are mobile apps. The Community edition is free and open source under the MIT licence. Koel Plus is a paid upgrade that adds features such as per-user libraries with music sharing, collaborative playlists, cloud storage backends such as SFTP, S3 and Dropbox, single sign-on and white labelling. Koel needs PHP, a database and some web server setup, though a standalone binary is now offered. Its library management is browser-centric, and larger households may find the paid features necessary.

Best for: People who want a good-looking browser music player for their own collection.

What works

Clean, fast, modern web interface
Smart playlists, lossless playback and podcasts
MIT-licensed community edition

Why people leave

Multi-library sharing and SSO need Koel Plus
PHP stack takes more setup than single-binary servers
Music only

Top Koel alternatives

See all 4

1
Navidrome
Lighter to run and works with the wide Subsonic app ecosystem for free.
66.5
2
Swing Music
Another polished self-hosted music UI with folder browsing.
62.6
3
Ampache
Free multi-protocol server including video and DLNA.
59.6
4
Funkwhale
Free, federated music and podcast hosting for communities.
57.2

Why people left Koel

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Koel: common questions

Is Koel free?

Yes. Koel is free, open-source software that you can host yourself.

Is Koel open source?

Yes. The source code is on GitHub at koel/koel. You can also run it on your own server.

What platforms does Koel run on?

Koel is available for Self-hosted, Web, iOS and Android.

What are the best alternatives to Koel?

The highest-ranked Koel alternatives right now are Navidrome, Swing Music and Ampache. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.

See all 4 Koel alternatives

Koel facts

4 of 4 verified

License: MIT; Checked Oct 25, 2026github.com(opens source in a new tab); “License: MIT (MIT License).”
Community edition: Free and open source; Checked Oct 25, 2026koel.dev(opens source in a new tab); “koel Plus The Community version of Koel will always be free and open-source.”
Paid tier: Koel Plus; Checked Oct 25, 2026docs.koel.dev(opens source in a new tab); “ Introduction Koel Plus is the premium version of Koel.”
Playback features: Lossless, cross-device sync; Checked Oct 25, 2026koel.dev(opens source in a new tab); “transparent lossless support, cross-device playback synchronization”