About Mopidy
Mopidy is a music server written in Python and designed to be extended. It runs on a computer or small device and plays music that you control remotely from a phone, tablet or another computer, using any MPD client or web client.
Music can come from local disk, Spotify, SoundCloud, internet radio and other sources, with additional sources added through extensions listed on the project website. This design lets one server and one set of clients cover many services. Packages and installation instructions exist for Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS, Arch Linux and macOS, as well as manual installation.
Mopidy is licensed under Apache-2.0. The project provides documentation for installing, configuring and developing extensions, a Discourse forum for help and a Zulip chat for development discussion. Contributions such as bug fixes, testing, documentation and user support are welcome.
Key features
- Plays local music files
- Streaming sources through extensions
- Control from any MPD client
- Web client support
- Packages for Debian, Raspberry Pi OS and macOS
- Extension system written in Python
Good fit for
- →Building a home music server
- →Controlling music playback from a phone
- Built with
- Python
- Tags
- music-server
- mpd
- python
- self-hosted
- audio
- streaming
- extensions
- raspberry-pi
Mopidy: questions and answers
- What is Mopidy used for?
- Mopidy is a Python-based, extensible music server that plays local files and streaming sources and can be controlled from MPD or web clients. It is a good fit for building a home music server and controlling music playback from a phone.
- Is Mopidy open source?
- Yes. Mopidy is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at mopidy/mopidy and is written mainly in Python.
- Is Mopidy free?
- Yes. Mopidy is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Mopidy?
- Yes. Mopidy can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
- What is Mopidy an alternative to?
- Mopidy is an open-source alternative to Pandora, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Roon. Other open-source alternatives to Pandora include Navidrome, Koel and Ampache.
- Is Mopidy actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Mopidy was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v4.0.4, published on 12 September 2026. The project has 8.6k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to Mopidy
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🎧 Open source music streaming app! Available for both desktop & mobile!
OSSvs Spotify★ 50k
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music streaming server / free-software subsonic server API implementation
GPL-3.0vs Spotify★ 2.6k
SaaS alternatives to Mopidy
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Pandora
Media & Streaming
Personalized internet radio and on-demand music from SiriusXM
SaaS
TuneIn
Media & Streaming
Streams live radio stations, sports, news and podcasts from around the world
SaaS
iHeartRadio
Media & Streaming
Streaming service for live radio, podcasts and personalized music stations
SaaS
Roon
Media & Streaming
Music player and library manager for high-quality audio
SaaS
SiriusXM
Media & Streaming
Subscription satellite and streaming radio with music, talk and sports channels
SaaS
Mixcloud
Media & Streaming
Streaming platform for DJ mixes, radio shows and podcasts
SaaS

