Which streaming services does Streamlink support?

Updated

Streamlink supports most popular streaming services through a plugin system, with Twitch, YouTube, and "many more" included in the standard installation. The complete list of bundled plugins is documented on the project's plugins page, and some services have their own usage notes in the plugin-specific section of the documentation. Because support is plugin-based, new services can be added without changing the core tool.

How the plugin system works

Streamlink is built on top of a plugin system that makes adding support for new services straightforward. When you pass a URL to the command line, Streamlink matches it to a plugin, which then resolves the available streams for that URL.

The Quickstart example in the documentation shows this matching step explicitly:

$ streamlink twitch.tv/CHANNEL best
[cli][info] Found matching plugin twitch for URL twitch.tv/CHANNEL
[cli][info] Available streams: audio_only, 160p (worst), 360p, 480p, 720p, 720p60, 1080p60 (best)
[cli][info] Opening stream: 1080p60 (hls)
[cli][info] Starting player: vlc

The "Found matching plugin" line tells you which plugin handled the URL. If no plugin matches, Streamlink cannot extract the stream — that is the practical boundary of what it supports.

Where to find the full list

The documentation's table of contents lists plugins alphabetically, starting with entries such as abematv, adultswim, albavision, aloula, app17, ard_mediathek, and artetv. The overview page points to a dedicated plugins page for the complete list of included plugins.

Two things are worth checking before assuming a service works:

  • The plugins page — confirms whether a plugin ships with the current release (8.6.2).
  • Plugin-specific usage notes — some services need extra arguments or have known limitations, documented separately from the general command-line usage.

What "supported" means in practice

A plugin existing does not guarantee every stream on that service is accessible. Streams may be limited by region, authentication requirements, or changes on the service side. The plugin-specific documentation is the place to check for such conditions, since the overview page only states that most popular services are supported.

If a service you need is missing, the plugin architecture is the reason it can be added — either by the project or through plugin sideloading, which the documentation covers as part of the command-line interface guide.

Related capabilities

Beyond service support, the documentation covers streaming protocols, proxy support, metadata, and a configuration file. There is also a Python API for developers who want direct access to stream data, separate from the command-line tool. Streamlink itself is free software under a Simplified BSD license, forked from the no-longer-maintained Livestreamer project.