This guide will explain everything you need to know about these 2 amazing tools for lives: Streamlabs vs. StreamElements. However, there are differences despite many similarities, for example, did you know that you cannot open a live stream only with StreamElements? But with Streamlabs? This happens due to the architecture of these tools, in the article below is the explanation of how to combine these tools in your live stream and which is better among both.
Streamlabs vs StreamElements
In this article below, we will propose a battle between the two most complete streaming software today: Streamlabs OBS vs StreamElements. Which is better? Which is more customizable? What are the pros/cons? Here we clarify it.
Comparison between Streamlabs and StreamElements
Streamlabs offers a complete software package through Streamlabs OBS which is basically a re-skin of OBS Studio with some extra stream features to make setting up overlays and alerts super-easy. It even has a built-in activity feed bot manager overlay store and even a marketplace for optional extensions. On the StreamElements, solution on the other hand is a plugin with your already well-liked OBS Studio, it’s called OBS Live and you can either download the two separately or you can download them both right from StreamElements. The plugin adds an activity feed a chat window where you can play songs on the stream through OBS and even cloud backups of your settings and content.
Processing Power
Streamlabs OBS takes a lot more processing power to run an OBS than OBS Live because with Streamlabs you are running all your alerts, animated overlays, and all your widgets from your own computer. You incorporate them as a source in Streamlabs OBS and then they will run locally using your computer’s CPU. This may be fine if you have a powerful processor but most streamers will see a performance decline in encoding, especially while playing games. With StreamElements, you create your overlays and alerts on their website combining all your widgets and follower goals, and then your entire overlay can be imported as a single browser source into OBS Studio. This means everything runs on StreamElements servers and keeps your PC chugging through like a champ, so it can focus on the important things, like running the Valorant game. Even if you don’t have any widgets and overlays the OBS Studio and OBS Live combination is much more resource efficient than Streamlabs OBS because of how lightweight the base OBS Studio is.
Platform Specific Features
As mentioned earlier, StreamElements overlays are created on their website and imported into OBS by means of a browser source. Because of this your overlay alerts custom widgets and everything else are all saved in the cloud and can be easily transferred from one PC to another if you end up buying a new machine whether it’s to replace your current one or to act as a dedicated streaming workhorse. StreamElements also has something huge that Streamlabs is severely lacking and that’s the custom widget. It is essentially a blank canvas that allows developers to create and share their own widgets with the community.
Now, let’s talk about Streamlabs’ unique functionality. Streamlabs has nothing for free. When Logitech purchased Streamlabs back in 2019, a lot of the free overlay packages that were available beforehand have since been locked behind a paywall. That paywall just so happens to be a subscription service called Streamlabs Prime. As mentioned above, Streamlabs OBS has an overlay marketplace, so that is why most of their decent overlays are Prime only as are every single one of their extensions or apps. Even with Prime, the only unique features are the apps and most of them are similar to existing Twitch extensions.
Conclusion
If you are an absolute 100% beginner who has no idea where to start and just wants to get going right now, then Streamlabs is the choice for you. However, if you really care about how your stream looks and you want some awesome customization options, I would absolutely implore you to learn the ins and outs of StreamElements.
That is all you need to know about which is better between Streamlabs vs StreamElements. In the meanwhile, do not forget to check out our other guides here: Bing AI vs Google Bard, and ChatGPT vs Google Bard – Is Google Bard Better than ChatGPT.
