--- title: "OBS Studio Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of OBS Studio. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if OBS Studio is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/video-editing/obs-studio-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Screen Recording Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/screen-recording/) / [OBS Studio](https://www.softwareadvice.com/video-editing/obs-studio-profile/) / OBS Studio Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/video-editing/obs-studio-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/video-editing/obs-studio-profile/alternatives/) # OBS Studio User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.7/5 - Total reviews: 1,075 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.1/5 - Customer support: 4.2/5 - Value for money: 4.8/5 - Functionality: 4.6/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 766 reviews (71%) - 4 stars: 264 reviews (25%) - 3 stars: 35 reviews (3%) - 2 stars: 4 reviews (0%) - 1 star: 6 reviews (1%) ### Most mentioned pros - OBS Studio also provides good control over privacy and security because everything runs locally on your computer, giving users more confidence over their recordings. - The access to free tools that let anyone go live and stream to the biggest streaming platforms on the internet - A practical, easy to install solution with a lot of headache if you are not a nerd and want an easy plug and play solution to stream and record your videos. ### Most mentioned cons - It is a fight to configure the docks in the space you want them and many times the configuration is not supported so it wastes precious screen space. - It's concerning it's open source as well as all the plugins, which could easily lead to viruses being placed on devices by hackers. - Has a tough time handling inconsistent internet speeds, and can fail to recover a stream if the internet drops out for a second. ## OBS Studio customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 1,075 (page 1). ### Best Software App For Gameplay Streams - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Gift B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Music - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Very good experience, always my top choice for streaming purposes. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The most I like in the software is the ease of the interface and user-friendly features. It is very easy to learn and compared to other screen recording apps I used, it has more detailed features. I also like the shortcut keys for any commands I need while streaming. #### Cons The small fonts sometimes that I have to read and there must be a way to enlarge them but I haven't found out where. #### Reasons for switching to OBS Studio OBS Studio offers more and is more advanced. --- ### Best streaming software?! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Entertainment - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I've been using this program for years now for streaming, recording clips and podcasting and I can't find anything better! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I love that it's easy to integrate the platforms I'm going to use to stream, it's easy to update stream information (stream information dock), it's really easy to record and use it as a studio software for podcasting, it seems pretty safe when it comes to security, it's pretty quick and reliable and allows me to add as many features to my scenes as I see fit. All of this for free! #### Cons Some of the features are pretty technical so some homework is needed to fully take advantage. It's not as intuitive and I don't remember it having like a tutorial run through of the program. --- ### Essential For Streaming and Recording - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Entertainment - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. OBS is the easiest video recording/streaming software you can use. The amount of settings can be overwhelming to a new user, but there are tons of guides available although some may be outdated with UI changes in newer versions. However, most users would only need to change the settings once and forget about it, making it really fast to get started every time you want to record or stream. Getting the settings just right might take time as there is no one setting that fits everyone, but it's well worth the effort. Highly recommended for anyone who is looking for a recording or streaming software. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Having tried a number of other video recording / streaming software, OBS is easily the one that is easiest to use and work with. Most of the settings just need to be set once and you're pretty much set for good, making it quick and easy to use without much setup time. Even a complete beginner can get started within minutes, although it's recommended to spend some time adjusting the settings. #### Cons OBS has been streamlined a lot more in recent years, but there are still a lot of options that can be daunting to use or adjust for most people, although this can be a huge plus for those who knows how to tweak the settings. Although it can be used right away even by new users, it's recommended to spend at least a couple of hours to learn and adjust some of the more important settings to match your usage and setup. --- ### OBS Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Void D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered OBS is generally a really great program. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but I think that is more than made up for with its robust set of features, being free and open source, and the massive amount of community made plugins #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros OBS is a great free, open source software that allows recording and streaming of video, as well as many community-made plugins to help improve experience and provide additional features #### Cons OBS pushes out extremely frequent updates. While this may seem helpful, it's annoying to have to constantly update the software. I'd rather have an auto-update feature or have updates be consolidated in to larger, less frequent ones --- ### Save yourself explaining things repeatedly! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Amber L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall for a free software I am really impressed. It is easy to use out of the box. I have recommended to several colleagues who have also enjoyed using it for tutorials and walkthrough videos. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is simple to record video SOPs to upload to our intranet and share with colleagues. This saves me a lot of time answering the same questions repeatedly. #### Cons It can be difficult to set the audio levels at first. I filmed some videos that were way too quiet (whilst using a headset microphone) and I had to refilm. --- ### OBS: Objectively, the Best Video Recording Software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Caleb D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Writing and Editing - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. My experience with OBS has been nothing but positive. It's free, open-source, easy to learn, and quick to use, and it produces high-quality video and audio recordings. I appreciate that it's so simple but allows you to customize the audio levels of different audio sources. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I use OBS to record video and audio from client calls. I prefer OBS to system-default recording methods because I can set OBS to record specific screens and audio sources. When multiple programs are contributing to recorded audio, I can use OBS to raise/lower the volume of audio pulled from certain programs. It's handy when multiple people are on a call and talking over one another; I can keep change their individual volumes without altering the volume of their voices in the recording. #### Cons There is very little that I don't like about OBS Studio. Sometimes I have to reset the folder that files are automatically saved to. It changes back to the default option more often than I'd like. --- ### Obviously a Big Solution - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Simone B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It has been a big help during the pandemic season when I discovered it and I started to do many useful things for my job by remotely on a streaming platform. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It is free and this is a huge difference for people who wants to start their streamer experience #### Cons Only that maybe it can be easy to restart a streaming service without doing so many steps, maybe automatic when sometimes the network fails and then is reconnected after a second. --- ### Highly customisable, very well written screen recording software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: David B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Photography - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I have a very positive experience of OBS Studio. We use it to record tutorials, mainly, but I've occasionally tested its other functions. I've never known it to break, and I love that there are so many settings to customise. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Highly customisable screen recording software. It's possible to use as a web-cam for videoconferencing. #### Cons The interface is a little fiddly to get used to at first, but after a little practice, this isn't an issue. --- ### OBS Studio allows for no fuss recordings for any use case - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Bernie C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Accounting - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. My overall experience with OBS has been great. It is quite configurable and useful outside of the small learning curve at the beginning of when I started using it. There are many options to be able to tailor settings to your liking to get exactly want you want out of the software. However, the different docks on the main screen are not as configurable in size or location as you might expect. It is a fight to configure the docks in the space you want them and many times the configuration is not supported so it wastes precious screen space. Other than those two issues the experience has been great! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros - Free - Open source - Dark Mode - Supportive Community - Very configurable to the user's needs - Modern UI elements #### Cons - User interface has a small learning curve for beginners - Docks are not configurable as desired in size and location --- ### Easy to use and get started - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Tanner B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Online Media - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Simple to use out of the box with limitless customization. I’d recommend this to anyone looking to get started live-streaming or recording from their PC. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Open Broadcast Software is an out of the box, easy to use software to get started live-streaming to your desired platform. The vast amount of customization offers unlimited creativity and fun to add to your stream. #### Cons OBS offers what can seem overwhelming of an amount of features. I’ve been using this service for 5+ years and I still find something new every week. --- ### OBS Studio is Amazing! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: delores s. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Retail - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: November 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I love OBS Studio software, I am glad it's available for Windows Desktop users. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros First of all, I love that OBS Studio is free software and it allows me to capture my screen and do LIVE recordings for my YouTube Channel. I'm sure there is an upgrade feature somewhere, but I just need the basics to keep me going with my YouTube videos. #### Cons It was challenging to to use OBS Studio. I guess like with all new technology there is a learning curve. However, I started watching some YouTube videos and I did look at videos from the OBS YouTube channel and I eventually got up and running! #### Reasons for choosing OBS Studio I chose OBS Studio over Camtasia, and I love Adobe Premiere Pro, so I use both Premiere Pro and OBS quite often. --- ### Best FREE screen and stream recording software out there - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Dale M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Wholesale - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall i've found OBS to be a great free streaming software. For the purpose of streaming its fantastic with all the 'bells and whistles' next to the paid version that are out there. I've used it in both capacities for streaming gaming to twitch, as well as an educational stream over twitch through both schools and colleges. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The fact that OBS Studio is free and open source. It has tons of support and a very well rounded community backing its use. Any issues using the software is quickly solved by the great cupport community. Other than this the software is very intuitive and easy to use, especially if the main purpose is streaming, and screen sharing across a stream. #### Cons The issue I had with the software was calibrating OBS audio so that there were no delays in the streams audio. The good thing about this however, is there is a built in audio delay where you can purposefully delay someones audio so it matches the delay of other person streaming or recording. Not only is audio delay and issue, but audio sync with the video being streamed, but this has got far beter with each version update. #### Reasons for choosing OBS Studio OBS had a easier user interface and the over UX semmed far easy for a beginner to use than other software of this type. --- ### Not only FREE but intuitive - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jason C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Music - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I absolutely LOVE OBS Studio. It's like a gift from the heavens. It's completely FREE with the option to donate to its development because it is an open source program. All it took to get started was to watch a few how-to videos on YouTube for the setup I was going for and BOOM! We're in business. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros OBS Studio is FREE. Let that sink in. It also does more than other paid software I've used in the past (Bandicam). I can screen record and live stream it to social media platforms. If I need to capture the audio coming out of my Digital Audio Workstation, I simply have to put a plugin called Reastream from ReaPlugs at the end of my master channel to route the audio out of my DAW and into OBS Studio. #### Cons It can be a little tricky to setup how you want it but YouTube has a plethora of how-to videos showing you how to setup OBS Studio in various configurations. #### Reasons for switching to OBS Studio Bandicam at first appeared simple but I was never able to figure out how to route audio out of my DAW and into Bandicam. Pretty bad for a paid product. OBS Studio is FREE and does this effortlessly. --- ### OBS Studio for The Gaming Podcasters out there - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: steven l. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Fun, useful, It doesn't crash nearly as often as other streaming software. If it does crash there is a automatic crash handler that sends the data from the crash to the OBS Dev team for review to help correct and better the software for the next release. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros OBS Studio is a free and open-source software suite for recording and live streaming video content. It is widely used by gamers like me as well as other content creators to stream their gameplay or hold their Podcasts on Twitch and a variety of other platforms. OBS Studio is one of the more robust and free screen recorder and streaming suite available for gamers and podcasters, with everything one needs to achieve with some great results. It offers a wide selection of source options and is optimized for games. However, it is wise to get yourself familiarized with the software and experiment as well. #### Cons OBS Studio is powerful, customizable, and a resource-friendly solution especially with users on Twitch. However, limitations in advanced editing and streaming functionalities do require additional tools and at times other software to complement the suite that it is. Overall, OBS Studio is a awesome choice for gamers and podcasters who want to stream their gameplay on Twitch and other platforms. OBS offers a wide range of features and is optimized for games, but it can take some time to get familiar with the features, so best to learn and maybe check on a few tutorials. #### Reasons for switching to OBS Studio The crashes were more than i could handle and was quite frustrating. --- ### The best for both seasoned streamers and amateurs - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Cynthia B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Professional Training & Coaching - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered As mentioned above, I use it for both work and personal endeavors. I keep coming back to it and prefer it over other media management software. Until something better comes in the horizon (which hasn't been the case) I'll stick to it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros This is great for personal media management or large broadcasts. The great stuff is personalization as it adjusts to the needs of every event or stream that you need to prepare, keeping the settings in a single machine. #### Cons It could be a bit more intuitive or implement some automatization. --- ### OBS is great as a backup or as a primary software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Cooper B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered This software has come in handy so many times as a backup for live streaming and recording. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It seems like there are constant improvements and feature updates being made, but I've never had a major issue with the software itself! Super useful for our church! #### Cons I wish that the interface was nicer. It's definitely easy to use for people who have used it in the past, but for new users, it might be a bit scary at first. --- ### OBS - Twitch - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Nathaly H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Telecommunications - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: September 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I usually use it mostly for small company jobs to record some training but above all I use obs to broadcast on other platforms #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros When recording the screen you can get clear audio and the flow of what is being recorded is not slow, good FPS and above all not having watermarks in the middle of the video. I think the FPS that the recording can handle and the quality of it is what it is best at, plus you can also record the black screen and only get the audios. I have not used this option much but from the little that I have used it, it is very useful to be able to have all your screens and simply place in visual what you want from each of them. #### Cons I have a complaint here and it is that some tools are a little complex for someone who has not used them before, sometimes you must be guided by a video on YouTube to be able to obtain the maximum benefits, but outside of those it has very good complements --- ### OBS Studio is great and not just for streaming games! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Will V. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Veterinary - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have used OBS for years and love that it is constantly changing and evolving. I use it at work and at home and found it to be one of the first programs I install on any computer I use. The fact that it is free makes it even better. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The ease of use is what I like about this product. There are times when I need to customize the layout of what I am trying to record and it's great for putting things in layers. It is easy to set up and start recording or streaming with just a few layers to setup. #### Cons The part of OBS that might need a little work, is the "decks". When I stream twitch one of the decks would be stream information. If I close that deck down and try to find it again, it's not easy to find. So I have to close down OBS and reopen. --- ### An honest review about OBS Studio - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Rafael C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Telecommunications - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall if you want to start a career in Streaming or want to record for Youtube uploads then I highly recommend OBS Studio. Since OBS Studio is completely free and has tons of features and many custom extension which makes your experience better. I have been using OBS Studio to record videos of me and my friends playing video games together. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The best thing about OBS Studio is that it is free, it also has 2 versions which it's own website or the Steam version which both works fine, and it still receive updates. #### Cons The cons of OBS Studio is that new users will have a hard time setting up OBS for streaming or recording. But there is tons of Youtube tutorial on how to setup OBS to their liking. --- ### Stream, eat, sleep, repeat! Just like that, easy with OBS. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Andrius L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Food Production - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I have used the OBS for streaming the videos to youtube and the videos got saved there for later use. It is very useful tool to use that doesn't limit you from creativity #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Software is open source and free to use. Has many useful functions and is widely used. #### Cons Sometimes the configuration of perfect video audio streaming quality can take lots of time configuring the audio/video codecs. Luckily the forums has guides how to make stable and quality video streaming by jist adjusting the video codecs configuration --- ### Why is OBS Studio is the best free recording software for gamers? - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Tice M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Hardware - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Well I have been using it since 2017 and it has improved a lot over the years. To this day this program is the only recording software I use. I record a lot of Sims 4 gameplay and it works wonderfully. I just have to adjust a few settings and it gives me no issues. It also works great on Linux and other operating systems. The best part of this program is that there are no ads and no paywall to get unlimited recording time. You can record however long you wish and it is free. There are no watermarks or distracting ads unlike other recording software out there. This I would recommend overall a nine out of ten on a scale. Very easy to use and install and export the files to YouTube. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I like how easy this program is to download and install. Go to the official website and download it. Then in a few clicks of a button you are in the program. You can figure the fps and the quality best for your computer and then hit record. The default it puts recording format .mkv but that can be easily changed to mp4. #### Cons One bad feature is the CPU can randomly spike up to 50% when recording games in higher graphics. This mainly happens on lower pcs but can be fixed by lowing the quality of the game and the recording software. --- ### My OBS review. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Charles R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. OBS has been amazing and has really made Facebook and YouTube streaming quite simple. It has also eased video editing and capture. Generally, I love it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros OBS is quite easy to use and integrate in everyday video livestreaming and content creation a walk in the park. #### Cons OBS does not have dedicated lower thirds which are important in some streaming applications and requires third party integrations which are sometimes not guaranteed to work. It would be nice if OBS had default lower thirds plugin. --- ### Critical to my streaming setup - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: David L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Entertainment - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It is crucial to my growing podcasting and streaming business. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's the industry standard for a reason. Rock solid. Works fantastically in Linux. Integrates with JACK and Pipewire no problem. Also super convenient if I need to do a quick screen recording. #### Cons Three's not much to dislike about it. Sometimes it forgets my cameras though. That can be a pain. #### Reasons for choosing OBS Studio There were no alternatives for Linux --- ### OBS is great for streaming and recording! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: John M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Entertainment - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, using OBS has been a really good experience. Once you begin to learn the ropes and get an understanding of what the terms mean and the ways that they can affect streams and recordings, it becomes a very valuable tool for content creation that streamlines a lot of the finer details of a streaming and recording setup and allows one to focus on making content. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros OBS is software that really helped to make my streams and recordings really simple to manage. I stream and record most of my gameplay from Xbox One and with OBS I am able to use a simple set up to add personality and flair to my streams. I can also integrate OBS into my operation to stream to places such as YouTube, FaceBook, and Twitch using overlays which aren't provided natively by the Xbox One console which really helps one to stand out amongst other streamers. Set up is relatively easy because the OBS software has features that can detect what you have available and set itself up based on the specifications that it detects. When it comes to recording, using the capture software allows me to add overlays and things such as watermarks to content as it records as well as set up audio options such as microphones and the levels of audio that it records. Getting help is quite simple since there are many forums and other ways to find information and tips online as well as turotials provided by the developers themselves. #### Cons What I liked the least about this software was probably trying to understand what some of the options would do once I began to explore the program and options that it offers. Being new to streaming at the time, it was more or less a problem not having a good understanding of how to set things up overall. Once I spent some time browsing forums and the other sources of help regarding OBS, I found that it was pretty easy to understand how to adjust things as I needed to. #### Reasons for choosing OBS Studio At the time that I chose OBS, I was using an outdated laptop. While searching for a solution to fit my needs, I had come across quite a few people that recommended OBS since it didn't require much to run. Once I downloaded and found out that it would work on my old laptop just fine, I kept using it. --- ### One of the best free recording and streaming software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: E-Learning - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. When making videos for YouTube OBS make it less stressful by reducing additional editing steps. This is because the scene can be set prior to recording by OBS' editing features. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros OBS Studio is free, cross platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) and open-sourced. This makes it more transparent in terms of security. And also there is a powerful community of developers backing the project which means that more features are added regularly and fewer bugs. The software has got some awesome features packed inside a decent and optimal user interface. Users can highly customize their scenes with text, images, videos, webcams, display or window captures etc. Also users can add unlimited number of scenes and switch between them seamlessly while recording or streaming. The audio mixer is so simple yet powerful with features like noise suppression, gain etc. The layout of the interface could be rearranged or undocked out of the main window to use on a separate window space. The recordings can be saved in multiple formats and settings. Customizable hotkeys could be used to arrange shortcuts. When it comes to streaming, OBS allows hassle-free streaming across popular platforms. Account set up is easy and the streaming quality adjusts automatically based on the connection speed. Availability of a powerful API for integration with numerous plugins and scripts makes it more versatile and functional. Video conferencing could be made more interactive with video input from OBS Studio virtual cam tool. There are various filters available for videos like cropping, masking, color keying to remove backgrounds etc. #### Cons When it gets to settings and advanced adjustments in some features, most people gets confused with the technical terms and values. It is always better not to mess with the default values. On some devices there is a problem the with the screen recording that it becomes completely black. This can be solved by adjusting the system's graphics settings. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/video-editing/obs-studio-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- OBS Studio Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice