**Choosing Between OBS Studio and Streamlabs OBS: A Comprehensive Guide**

When it comes to live streaming, there are two popular software options that can help you achieve your goals: OBS Studio and Streamlabs OBS. Both programs have their pros and cons, and the right choice for you will depend on your specific needs and preferences.

**The Importance of Researching Your Needs**

Before deciding which program to use, it's essential to research which one offers the features that you are looking for. Each program has its unique set of capabilities, and understanding these differences is crucial in making an informed decision.

**The Power of OBS Studio Plugins**

One of the key features of OBS Studio that you cannot overlook is the plugins. These software add-ons can give extra functionality to the program, filling the gap between Streamlabs OBS and OBS Studio. For example, installing a virtual webcam plugin can make it possible to use the output of Streamlabs OBS as a virtual webcam in another program.

**The Possibilities with OBS Studio**

Once you start using plugins and experimenting with the software, things get advanced, but that's exactly what makes OBS Studio so powerful. You can do everything that Streamlabs OBS can do with a bit more effort, and from there on, when you grow as a streamer, you can start playing around with the software, installing a few plugins, and really making your stream unique to yourself.

**Choosing Between OBS Studio and Streamlabs OBS: A Simple Guide**

After running some tests and looking at the difference between the two programs, it's clear that there are only a few scenarios in which you would want to choose Streamlabs OBS. If your PC can't handle Streamlabs OBS or if you want to use the most efficient program, then OBS Studio is the way to go.

**The Right Scenario for Choosing Streamlabs OBS**

In my opinion, the only scenario in which you should choose Streamlabs OBS is when you want one program that you can use to set up your whole stream without any extra functionality. If your PC is strong enough to run Streamlabs OBS and you just want to add a game, some labels, and alerts, then it can be a good solution.

**The Right Choice for You**

If your PC can't handle Streamlabs OBS or if you want to use the most efficient program, then OBS Studio is the right choice. Here's why: the website we used (Stream Elements) to add overlays to OBS Studio could just as well be added in Streamlabs OBS by copying a link and adding it to your streaming software.

**Why Choose OBS Studio?**

If you're going to use external websites and install some new functionality to your stream, then I don't see any reason for using Streamlabs OBS. In that case, OBS Studio is the way to go since it's much easier on your PC and has a much higher potential.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, choosing between OBS Studio and Streamlabs OBS depends on your specific needs and preferences. If you want complete simplicity and don't need any extra functionality, then Streamlabs OBS might be the right choice for you. However, if you're looking to use the most efficient program and want to grow as a streamer, then OBS Studio is the way to go.

**Follow Me on Instagram or Twitter**

If you like this type of content, please follow me on Instagram or Twitter where I've been posting about this topic for the last few days.

**Like and Subscribe**

Like this video if you found it helpful, and subscribe to my channel to see more. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope to see you in the next video!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enobs studio or streamlabs obs i actually did a poll in my community tab 55 of you are using obs studio 45 streamlabs obs but i'm certain that many people out of the two groups are using the wrong software for them so the goal of this video is giving you a good representation of what the two programs can offer so you can make an informed choice this video is sponsored by owned pro it's a plugin for obs studio that gives you a big library of graphic packs five of them are free at all times and can be installed in one click if you want more options you can subscribe for less than ten dollars a month to get access to all graphic packs which is a lot to say the least besides that they also have a chat bot copyright free music and a bunch of other stuff they recently upgraded the plugin and there's a 50 sale going on so right now is a great time to get in the link to the tool will be in my description you can just install it for free to check it out and then decide if you want to buy it later again the link will be in my description obs studio is an open source program which means that i could take the source code of it then add a bunch of features to it and then launch that as my own software and that's exactly what streamlabs did they took basic obs studio they made it pretty and then they added a bunch of extra features to it which made it easier to set up your stream within the program for example adding alerts to the program adding labels adding a donation goal everything like that could be added within the software basically they made the creation of a stream much easier now this all sounds really good and it makes it feel like streamlabs obs is the best way to go it's the upgraded program it has a bunch of features but there is definitely more to it than that and streamlabs obs has a bunch of downsides that might just as well make you choose obs studio instead one big example of such a downside is that because stream ups obs is a fork of obs studio it means that when the guys from obs launched an update the guys at streamlabs need to take that update and then implement it in their adjusted software and make sure that nothing breaks and that process usually takes a lot of time obs studio also gives you more freedom and a great example of this is that you can move all these panels and rearrange everything or you can even undock them and use them separately from your obs program this gives you amazing freedom and in streamlabs obs this isn't possible they have a layout editor but this has a few fixed layouts you can move around things like that but you can't rescale and resize everything exactly like you want and you can definitely not undock anything and this creative freedom in obs and kind of being locked into how they designed it with streamlabs obs is a common theme when comparing both programs they kind of feel like apple vs android it's not exactly like that it's a bad comparison to be honest but it just feels like that apple is great apple is easy to use but you're kind of locked down in their ecosystem and you're locked down to use the phone or in this case streamlabs obs the way they intended it whereas in obs studio or android you can install what you want you can change what you want now the next big thing we need to talk about is overlay elements like labels alerts all that stuff because in streamlabs obs all of that is built in when you click on the plus icon on the left you have the basic sources which we also have in obs studio once we click on the plus icon but then on the right side in streamlabs obs we have a bunch of widgets which we don't have in obs studio things like a donation goal alerts there are a bunch of things you can add with streamlabs things that are important for your stream but which aren't available in obs studio and for that reason when using obs studio you need to look for another service that can provide you with all those things now the most well-known one is obs studio plus stream elements they have an overlay editor and there you can add everything that's not available in obs studio again things like a donation goal labels alerts everything you can imagine that you want to add to your stream you can do it with stream elements and then once you've set up your scene here you just copy the link and then you add that as a browser source in obs studio and then you have everything but with streamlabs it comes built into the program and again this is a big reason why people go for streamlabs obs instead of obs studio everything is available within the program you can click a few buttons and you're ready to go online now there are two important things to mention here the first thing is that for beginners who don't want to install extra plugins in obs studio people who just want to set up their stream and go online those people might be very drawn to streamlabs obs because it's so easy but then we have the second one which i already mentioned before and that's that streamlabs obs is harder to run on your pc and in many of the cases the people who are getting into streaming the people who want to try it are the ones with the slowest computer now this obviously is a generalization but in many cases beginner streamers go to stream apps obs because it looks good and because it's easy to set up but then once they start streaming they see that their pc can't really handle the stream and then the thing you read everywhere online try obs studio it will probably go better it also makes a lot of sense in stream absolutely as obs studio plus a bunch of features that weigh down the program that make it slower to run on your pc but i want to make sure that i'm giving the right advice so i'm gonna test it guys i just finished some tests the difference in cpu usage is so much bigger than expected here i can track streamlabs obs and see the cpu usage but you gotta see what happens so i'm gonna go live here okay let's click on confirm and now let's launch overwatch so i'm gonna turn around here now look at the cpu usage usually it sits at around sixty percent sometimes it peaks at seventy and don't get me wrong sixty percent is okay since i'm using cpu encoding for this test however it is not okay if you see that my previous test with obs studio resulted in twenty seven percent i also did a test with amv yank encoding instead of software x264 and the result was 1.2 percent for obs studio and 4 for streamlabs obs no matter which test i ran streamlabs obs used at least double of the power of obs studio for exactly the same settings now while i was blown away by the difference of the two it's still important to note that i was using software x264 encoding which is cpu encoding as you saw in the test results when i was using an viank encoding so using my gpu the difference was a few percentages since there's not a lot of cpu usage if you are using software x264 encoding so if you don't have a graphics card in which case your pc will probably not be that strong it's obviously very beneficial to use obs studio instead of streamlabs obs however if your cpu is strong enough or you have a nvidia graphics card then you don't really need to worry about this problem and at the start of the video it seemed like streamlabs obs was the way to go because of all the options you got within the program and right now it seems like obs studio is the way to go but this is just how it is both of these programs have pros and cons and they both serve a specific audience the important thing for you is to research which of these programs offers the features that you are looking for a very important feature of obs studio that you definitely cannot overlook are the plugins this is software that you download and then install in the obs folder which gives extra functionality to the program and using plugins can also fill the gap between streamlabs obs and obs studio because there are some things that streamlabs can do which obs studio can't but installing plugins can easily fix that an example of this is the virtual webcam you can make of streamlabs obs basically what this is is using the output of streamlabs obs as a virtual webcam to use in another program and obs can't do that but you can simply install a plugin that adds that functionality to obs studio and from there the possibilities are endless now once you start doing things like that it's not basic anymore it's a bit advanced but that's the point of using obs studio you can do everything streamlabs obs can do with a bit more effort but from there on when you grow as a streamer and you learn more things then you can start playing around with the software installing a few plugins and really making your stream unique to yourself now i could keep talking about the difference between the two programs and about specific functionalities but let me give you a broad overview of which software you probably want to pick it's pretty simple to be honest after running a few tests today and really looking at the difference between the two there's only a few scenarios in which you want to choose streamlabs obs now if you don't have a strong processor or an nvidia graphics card then streamlabs obs is probably not gonna work for you either way now if your pc can run streamlabs obs then in which scenario do you want to choose it well in my opinion only in one if you want one program which you can use to set up your whole stream you don't care about extra functionality your pc is strong enough to run streamlabs obs and you just wanna add your game add a few labels add some alerts and then go live and don't think about it anymore then streamlabs obs can definitely be a good solution so yeah when you wanna choose obs studio well in all the other scenarios if your pc can't handle streamlabs obs if you want to use the most efficient program if you want to use the standard program if you're in this for the long run and you want to evolve as a streamer maybe discover some new tools or some new websites to add fun things to your stream you want to use obs studio because here's the thing and this will wrap everything together the website we used stream elements to add overlays to obs studio you could just as well add some labels and some alerts here then copy the link and add that link in streamlabs obs and you can do this with most things if it's not a plugin that you need to install in obs studio if it's an external website where you can create something and then copy a link and add it to your streaming software you can do it in streamlabsobias as well in obs studio but if you're gonna be using external websites and install some new functionality to your stream then i don't see any reason for using stream apps obs for that the only reason to choose streamlabs is if you want complete simplicity if you want to install the program add a few things and be done with it in that case i can understand using streamlabs obs but if you're gonna dive into some extra stuff and use websites in that case you can just as well use obs studio since it's much easier for your pc to run and it has a much higher potential if you like this type of stuff definitely follow me on instagram or on twitter i've been posting about this for the last few days like this video if you want to help me out because it helps a lot in the youtube algorithm subscribe to the channel to see more and besides that thank you so much for watching and i hope that i will see you in the next video have a nice dayobs studio or streamlabs obs i actually did a poll in my community tab 55 of you are using obs studio 45 streamlabs obs but i'm certain that many people out of the two groups are using the wrong software for them so the goal of this video is giving you a good representation of what the two programs can offer so you can make an informed choice this video is sponsored by owned pro it's a plugin for obs studio that gives you a big library of graphic packs five of them are free at all times and can be installed in one click if you want more options you can subscribe for less than ten dollars a month to get access to all graphic packs which is a lot to say the least besides that they also have a chat bot copyright free music and a bunch of other stuff they recently upgraded the plugin and there's a 50 sale going on so right now is a great time to get in the link to the tool will be in my description you can just install it for free to check it out and then decide if you want to buy it later again the link will be in my description obs studio is an open source program which means that i could take the source code of it then add a bunch of features to it and then launch that as my own software and that's exactly what streamlabs did they took basic obs studio they made it pretty and then they added a bunch of extra features to it which made it easier to set up your stream within the program for example adding alerts to the program adding labels adding a donation goal everything like that could be added within the software basically they made the creation of a stream much easier now this all sounds really good and it makes it feel like streamlabs obs is the best way to go it's the upgraded program it has a bunch of features but there is definitely more to it than that and streamlabs obs has a bunch of downsides that might just as well make you choose obs studio instead one big example of such a downside is that because stream ups obs is a fork of obs studio it means that when the guys from obs launched an update the guys at streamlabs need to take that update and then implement it in their adjusted software and make sure that nothing breaks and that process usually takes a lot of time obs studio also gives you more freedom and a great example of this is that you can move all these panels and rearrange everything or you can even undock them and use them separately from your obs program this gives you amazing freedom and in streamlabs obs this isn't possible they have a layout editor but this has a few fixed layouts you can move around things like that but you can't rescale and resize everything exactly like you want and you can definitely not undock anything and this creative freedom in obs and kind of being locked into how they designed it with streamlabs obs is a common theme when comparing both programs they kind of feel like apple vs android it's not exactly like that it's a bad comparison to be honest but it just feels like that apple is great apple is easy to use but you're kind of locked down in their ecosystem and you're locked down to use the phone or in this case streamlabs obs the way they intended it whereas in obs studio or android you can install what you want you can change what you want now the next big thing we need to talk about is overlay elements like labels alerts all that stuff because in streamlabs obs all of that is built in when you click on the plus icon on the left you have the basic sources which we also have in obs studio once we click on the plus icon but then on the right side in streamlabs obs we have a bunch of widgets which we don't have in obs studio things like a donation goal alerts there are a bunch of things you can add with streamlabs things that are important for your stream but which aren't available in obs studio and for that reason when using obs studio you need to look for another service that can provide you with all those things now the most well-known one is obs studio plus stream elements they have an overlay editor and there you can add everything that's not available in obs studio again things like a donation goal labels alerts everything you can imagine that you want to add to your stream you can do it with stream elements and then once you've set up your scene here you just copy the link and then you add that as a browser source in obs studio and then you have everything but with streamlabs it comes built into the program and again this is a big reason why people go for streamlabs obs instead of obs studio everything is available within the program you can click a few buttons and you're ready to go online now there are two important things to mention here the first thing is that for beginners who don't want to install extra plugins in obs studio people who just want to set up their stream and go online those people might be very drawn to streamlabs obs because it's so easy but then we have the second one which i already mentioned before and that's that streamlabs obs is harder to run on your pc and in many of the cases the people who are getting into streaming the people who want to try it are the ones with the slowest computer now this obviously is a generalization but in many cases beginner streamers go to stream apps obs because it looks good and because it's easy to set up but then once they start streaming they see that their pc can't really handle the stream and then the thing you read everywhere online try obs studio it will probably go better it also makes a lot of sense in stream absolutely as obs studio plus a bunch of features that weigh down the program that make it slower to run on your pc but i want to make sure that i'm giving the right advice so i'm gonna test it guys i just finished some tests the difference in cpu usage is so much bigger than expected here i can track streamlabs obs and see the cpu usage but you gotta see what happens so i'm gonna go live here okay let's click on confirm and now let's launch overwatch so i'm gonna turn around here now look at the cpu usage usually it sits at around sixty percent sometimes it peaks at seventy and don't get me wrong sixty percent is okay since i'm using cpu encoding for this test however it is not okay if you see that my previous test with obs studio resulted in twenty seven percent i also did a test with amv yank encoding instead of software x264 and the result was 1.2 percent for obs studio and 4 for streamlabs obs no matter which test i ran streamlabs obs used at least double of the power of obs studio for exactly the same settings now while i was blown away by the difference of the two it's still important to note that i was using software x264 encoding which is cpu encoding as you saw in the test results when i was using an viank encoding so using my gpu the difference was a few percentages since there's not a lot of cpu usage if you are using software x264 encoding so if you don't have a graphics card in which case your pc will probably not be that strong it's obviously very beneficial to use obs studio instead of streamlabs obs however if your cpu is strong enough or you have a nvidia graphics card then you don't really need to worry about this problem and at the start of the video it seemed like streamlabs obs was the way to go because of all the options you got within the program and right now it seems like obs studio is the way to go but this is just how it is both of these programs have pros and cons and they both serve a specific audience the important thing for you is to research which of these programs offers the features that you are looking for a very important feature of obs studio that you definitely cannot overlook are the plugins this is software that you download and then install in the obs folder which gives extra functionality to the program and using plugins can also fill the gap between streamlabs obs and obs studio because there are some things that streamlabs can do which obs studio can't but installing plugins can easily fix that an example of this is the virtual webcam you can make of streamlabs obs basically what this is is using the output of streamlabs obs as a virtual webcam to use in another program and obs can't do that but you can simply install a plugin that adds that functionality to obs studio and from there the possibilities are endless now once you start doing things like that it's not basic anymore it's a bit advanced but that's the point of using obs studio you can do everything streamlabs obs can do with a bit more effort but from there on when you grow as a streamer and you learn more things then you can start playing around with the software installing a few plugins and really making your stream unique to yourself now i could keep talking about the difference between the two programs and about specific functionalities but let me give you a broad overview of which software you probably want to pick it's pretty simple to be honest after running a few tests today and really looking at the difference between the two there's only a few scenarios in which you want to choose streamlabs obs now if you don't have a strong processor or an nvidia graphics card then streamlabs obs is probably not gonna work for you either way now if your pc can run streamlabs obs then in which scenario do you want to choose it well in my opinion only in one if you want one program which you can use to set up your whole stream you don't care about extra functionality your pc is strong enough to run streamlabs obs and you just wanna add your game add a few labels add some alerts and then go live and don't think about it anymore then streamlabs obs can definitely be a good solution so yeah when you wanna choose obs studio well in all the other scenarios if your pc can't handle streamlabs obs if you want to use the most efficient program if you want to use the standard program if you're in this for the long run and you want to evolve as a streamer maybe discover some new tools or some new websites to add fun things to your stream you want to use obs studio because here's the thing and this will wrap everything together the website we used stream elements to add overlays to obs studio you could just as well add some labels and some alerts here then copy the link and add that link in streamlabs obs and you can do this with most things if it's not a plugin that you need to install in obs studio if it's an external website where you can create something and then copy a link and add it to your streaming software you can do it in streamlabsobias as well in obs studio but if you're gonna be using external websites and install some new functionality to your stream then i don't see any reason for using stream apps obs for that the only reason to choose streamlabs is if you want complete simplicity if you want to install the program add a few things and be done with it in that case i can understand using streamlabs obs but if you're gonna dive into some extra stuff and use websites in that case you can just as well use obs studio since it's much easier for your pc to run and it has a much higher potential if you like this type of stuff definitely follow me on instagram or on twitter i've been posting about this for the last few days like this video if you want to help me out because it helps a lot in the youtube algorithm subscribe to the channel to see more and besides that thank you so much for watching and i hope that i will see you in the next video have a nice day