Best Spotify Alternatives in 2026: Streaming Services and Self-Hosted Music Servers

If you want another streaming service, the best Spotify alternatives are YouTube Music for a free, ad-supported way in with official tracks and videos, Apple Music for a paid service with lossless audio, and Tidal or Qobuz for listeners who care most about sound quality. If you own your music files, Navidrome turns them into a personal streaming service that you host yourself.

This guide covers both kinds of alternatives to Spotify. Picks 1 to 5 are hosted services you subscribe to or buy from, and picks 6 to 11 are open-source servers and apps you run or install yourself. Each section says whether the tool is open source and whether you can self-host it.

Why people look for Spotify alternatives

Spotify is a hosted, proprietary service with no self-hosted version, so everything you listen to, save and recommend lives inside one company's account system. That is convenient and also the source of most complaints.

• You rent access. Playlists, saved albums and recommendations exist only while you keep using the service. Services also change their catalogs over time, so a song that was in your playlist can disappear from it.
• Sound quality. Some listeners want lossless or hi-res audio as the main selling point, which is the focus of Tidal and Qobuz.
• How artists are paid. People who want more of their money to reach musicians look at stores such as Bandcamp, where artists sell direct, or at services that publish how they pay per stream.
• Privacy. Open-source players and servers such as Spotube and Navidrome run without a vendor's tracking account, and Spotube states that it collects no telemetry.
• Ownership. If you have a CD collection or a folder of purchased downloads, a self-hosted server lets you stream it everywhere without paying a monthly fee for the privilege.

How we picked

Each hosted service is here for a specific difference from Spotify, such as a free tier, audio quality or how artists are paid, taken from its Enlisted listing and official site. Self-hosted software had to be actively developed on GitHub and to work with music you own, and licences are quoted as Enlisted shows them. Prices and GitHub numbers live in the table rather than the text, because they change. See how Enlisted ranks tools for the method.

1. YouTube Music: best hosted alternative if you want videos and live versions

YouTube Music is a streaming service from YouTube that combines official studio tracks, live performances and music videos, so you can switch between the audio and video version of a song. It is tied to a Google account, and Enlisted lists it as freemium, meaning there is a free way to listen alongside paid options.

Its link to YouTube's wider pool of music content is what sets it apart from Spotify. Finding live versions and remixes of a song is a common reason to use it.

• Best for: people who already live in the Google and YouTube ecosystem and want a free starting point.
• Watch out for: it is closed and hosted, and the exact limits of the free and paid plans are set by Google, so check them before you move your playlists.

2. Apple Music: best paid service for lossless audio on Apple devices

Apple Music is Apple's subscription music service, with a catalog of songs, music videos and live performances, personalized recommendations, radio programming and a lossless audio option. You can listen in the Music app on Apple devices, in the web player or on Android.

Enlisted lists it as a paid service with no free plan. It is the natural pick for iPhone and Mac owners who want music built into the devices they already use.

• Best for: Apple users who want lossless audio and editorial radio shows.
• Watch out for: there is no free tier, and it is a closed, hosted service like Spotify, so the same ownership concerns apply.

3. Tidal: best for high-fidelity and spatial audio

Tidal is a music streaming service known for its focus on audio quality, offering high-fidelity sound and spatial audio formats. It appeals to people with good headphones or home audio equipment who want more detail than standard streaming provides.

Enlisted lists Tidal as a paid subscription and advises confirming plan tiers and device support on Tidal's own site.

• Best for: listeners with decent audio gear who care about quality over features.
• Watch out for: quality benefits depend on your equipment, and it remains a closed, hosted service.

4. Qobuz: best for hi-res streaming plus downloads you keep

Qobuz is a music platform that pairs a streaming subscription with a download store, concentrating on lossless and high-resolution audio. According to its official site, it also publishes human-curated editorial content and its average pay-per-stream rates, which it uses to position itself as artist-first.

The store matters if you want to build a library you own. Files you buy are yours to keep, and they are exactly what the self-hosted servers below are built to play.

• Best for: audiophiles who want to stream in high resolution and buy albums to keep.
• Watch out for: there is no free tier. Enlisted lists a free trial, so try the trial before you commit.

5. Bandcamp: best for buying music directly from artists

Bandcamp is an online music store and community where artists and labels sell digital music, vinyl, CDs, cassettes and merchandise directly to fans. Listeners can stream releases on the site and buy what they like, with the stated aim of directly supporting the people who make the music.

It also runs editorial coverage through Bandcamp Daily and radio shows, and you can browse by genre and location. It is closer to a store than a Spotify replacement, but it speaks directly to listeners who want more of their money to reach artists. Files you buy there can feed straight into a self-hosted music server, covered below. For more hosted options, see Spotify alternatives on Enlisted.

• Best for: people who want to pay artists directly and own their files.
• Watch out for: it is not an all-you-can-stream catalog, so most people use it alongside another service.

6. Navidrome: best self-hosted music server for most people

Navidrome is an open-source music server written in Go that streams your own collection through a web player and mobile apps, much like a personal streaming service. You point it at a folder of audio files, and it serves them to any device.

It is compatible with the Subsonic and OpenSubsonic API family, so many existing client apps can connect to it, and it supports on-the-fly transcoding and multiple libraries with per-user access. It is light enough to run on small hardware such as a Raspberry Pi, and its listing mentions optional hosting through PikaPods if you would rather not run it yourself. It is released under GPL-3.0.

• Best for: anyone with a personal music collection who wants a simple, always-available streaming server.
• Watch out for: it has no catalog of its own, so it only plays files you provide, and a well-tagged library will look much better in the app.

7. Jellyfin: best if you also want to host movies and shows

Jellyfin is a free-software media system that manages and streams your own media from a dedicated server to apps on many devices. It was built as an alternative to proprietary media servers such as Plex and Emby, and the project states there are no premium licences or paid features.

Music is one part of a bigger library. If you want one server for films, shows and music, Jellyfin covers all of it, and Finamp is an open-source music player designed specifically for Jellyfin servers. It is released under GPL-2.0.

• Best for: households that want a single self-hosted server for all their media.
• Watch out for: it is a general media server, which is more than you need if all you want is music. A music-only server such as Navidrome is simpler.

8. Koel: best web-first music server with podcasts and smart playlists

Koel is a free, open-source music streaming server built on Laravel and Vue that scans your library and serves it through a modern web interface. It supports playlists and smart playlists, scrobbling, podcasts and radio, and integrations with Last.fm, Spotify and MusicBrainz. It is released under the MIT licence.

Koel Player is the official iOS and Android app, which gets around the limits of the mobile web version. Its listing also mentions an AI assistant that responds to natural-language commands.

• Best for: people who want a polished browser-based player with playlists, podcasts and radio in one place.
• Watch out for: it is a Laravel application, so setup involves a web stack rather than a single self-contained binary.

9. Gonic: best lightweight Subsonic server

Gonic is a free-software music streaming server written in Go that implements the Subsonic API, so it works with the many apps that speak that protocol. It is lightweight enough for a Raspberry Pi and ships ARM images.

You can browse by folder, which keeps your directory tree intact, or by tags. It supports on-the-fly transcoding through ffmpeg, multiple users with their own playlists, podcasts, and scrobbling to last.fm and ListenBrainz. It is licensed under GPL-3.0. Ampache is a PHP-based alternative if you want a web-based audio and video streaming application with a documented API for third-party clients.

• Best for: minimalists who want a small server and already have a favorite Subsonic client.
• Watch out for: its web interface is for configuration, so you will need a separate client app to actually listen.

10. Feishin: best player app for your own music server

Feishin is a modern music player for self-hosted servers, acting as a client for Navidrome, Jellyfin and other Subsonic-compatible servers. It is available as a desktop app and a web app, with an MPV playback backend on desktop, scrobbling to your server, synchronized lyrics and a smart playlist editor for Navidrome.

On Android, Tempus is a native Subsonic client with offline playback and, in its GitHub build, Android Auto and Chromecast support. A server plus a good client is what gives self-hosting its Spotify-like feel.

• Best for: desktop listeners who want a good-looking front end for Navidrome or Jellyfin.
• Watch out for: it is a client only, so you still need a server. Tempus is an Android client, not a server.

11. Spotube: best open-source Spotify-style player app

Spotube is an open-source, plugin-based music app for desktop and mobile, written in Flutter. Instead of tying you to one service, it relies on community plugins that supply music metadata, playlists and audio sources, and its site says it collects no telemetry and keeps playback control local. It is free to use.

It looks and behaves more like a streaming app than a server, with downloadable tracks, tagged metadata and time-synced lyrics. Because the music comes from whichever plugins you install, it is a player, not a library you host.

• Best for: people who want an open-source, privacy-minded player app without running a server.
• Watch out for: what you can play depends entirely on the plugins you add, so check that the sources you use are legal in your country and fair to artists.

Other streaming services worth a look

A few more hosted services are listed on Enlisted. Amazon Music and Deezer both list a free ad-supported tier alongside paid plans, and Deezer is known for Flow, a personalized stream. Pandora is SiriusXM-owned and built around personalized radio stations. SoundCloud is where independent artists, DJs and podcasters upload music that is often unavailable elsewhere.

Which Spotify alternative should you choose?

You can also browse the full media category on Enlisted.

Replacing Spotify's other features

Most people use Spotify for more than songs, and self-hosted tools cover some of the rest.

• Podcasts and audiobooks: Audiobookshelf is a self-hosted server for audiobooks and podcasts with per-user progress synced across devices and companion mobile apps.
• Shared queues: Jukebox is an open-source alternative to collaborative playlists. A group adds songs to a shared queue from a link, with no account needed, using YouTube for playback. Its GitHub repository has had no recent commits at the time of writing, so check the project's status before relying on it.
• Tinkering: Mopidy is an extensible Python music server that plays local files and streaming sources and can be controlled from any MPD client or web client.

What you need to run your own music server

A self-hosted music server is only as good as the library you give it. You will need:

• Music files you have the right to keep: ripped CDs and downloads you bought, from stores such as Bandcamp or Qobuz, are the obvious sources. A server only plays the files you give it.
• Clean tags: servers sort your library by embedded tags or file names. MusicBrainz Picard and Beets fix tags using the MusicBrainz database.
• A machine that stays on: Navidrome and Gonic are both described as light enough for a Raspberry Pi.
• A client app: pick a Subsonic-compatible client on your phone and desktop, as covered above.

If you are also moving your files off big platforms, see our guide to Dropbox and Google Drive alternatives.