You want to be live on more than one platform. Every result is a service charging monthly to relay your stream. There is another way, and whether it suits you comes down to one number.
The two approaches
A relay service takes one stream from you and redistributes it to each platform from their servers. You upload once; they handle the rest.
Local fan-out sends to each platform directly from your machine. No service in the middle and no monthly fee, but each destination uses your upload bandwidth.
The number that decides it
Your upload speed. Three destinations at 5 Mbps is 15 Mbps of upload, not 5 — this is the part people get wrong.
Measure your actual upload rather than the figure on the bill. If you have 50 Mbps up, local fan-out to three platforms is comfortable. If you have 10, it is not, and the relay service is genuinely earning its fee.
Encode once, not once per platform
The expensive part is encoding, not sending. If software encodes separately for each destination, three destinations cost roughly three times the processing and the machine struggles.
Single-encode fan-out does the work once and sends the same encoded result to every destination. Check which your software does before you add destinations — it is the difference between three platforms being free and three platforms needing a better computer.
What you lose without a relay
- A relay can transcode per platform, sending different resolutions to each. Local fan-out sends the same stream everywhere.
- A relay keeps streaming if your connection drops briefly. Local fan-out does not.
- Some relays merge the chat from every platform. Without one you need software that does it.
When a subscription is the right call
If your upload cannot carry the total, if you need different quality per platform, or if your connection is unreliable enough that a buffer between you and the platforms genuinely helps — pay for the relay. It is solving a real problem.
When it is not
If your upload has headroom and your connection is stable, you are paying monthly for something your machine already does.
Skynat Live fans out locally with a single encode, so adding destinations costs bandwidth but not processing. Each destination has its own health indicator and reconnects independently, and chat from every platform arrives in one column — which is the main thing a relay would otherwise have given you.