Bunny Stream

Bunny Stream is the video hosting and delivery arm of bunny.net, a European edge platform founded in 2015 by Dejan Grofelnik Pelzel in Ljubljana, Slovenia. What started as BunnyCDN -- a scrappy, affordable content delivery network -- has grown into a comprehensive platform serving over 60,000 businesses and powering more than 1.5 million websites across 82 countries. Bunny Stream packages video transcoding, adaptive streaming, CDN delivery, a customizable player, DRM protection, and analytics into a single service with pricing that dramatically undercuts US-based competitors like Mux, Wistia, and JW Player.

The video hosting market has traditionally been dominated by expensive, enterprise-focused platforms or advertising-driven services like YouTube that trade privacy for free hosting. Bunny Stream occupies a different position: professional-grade video infrastructure at pay-as-you-go prices that make it accessible to individual creators, small businesses, and large enterprises alike. For European businesses concerned about data sovereignty, Bunny Stream's Slovenian headquarters and EU-based infrastructure provide a clean GDPR compliance story that no US-based video platform can match.

Video Encoding and Adaptive Streaming

When you upload a video to Bunny Stream, the platform automatically transcodes it into multiple quality levels optimized for adaptive bitrate streaming. This means viewers automatically receive the best possible quality for their internet connection and device -- a viewer on fiber watches in 4K while a viewer on mobile data gets a smooth 480p stream without buffering. The transcoding is included in the storage price at no additional per-minute charge, which is a significant departure from competitors like Mux that bill separately for encoding.

Bunny Stream supports a wide range of input formats and produces HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) output, the industry standard used by Netflix, Apple, and most major streaming services. The encoding pipeline handles everything from short social clips to hour-long webinars, and the system supports resolutions up to 4K. Uploaded videos are processed quickly, with most content available for streaming within minutes rather than hours.

Global CDN Delivery

Video delivered through Bunny Stream rides on bunny.net's global CDN, which operates over 100 points of presence across six continents. This means your European audience gets lightning-fast video loading from edge servers in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, or Warsaw, while viewers in Asia, North America, or South America are served from their nearest edge location. The CDN architecture ensures low latency and minimal buffering regardless of viewer location.

The edge network is built on modern SSD-backed infrastructure with intelligent caching that keeps frequently accessed content as close to viewers as possible. For businesses with a European audience, bunny.net's dense European presence is a distinct advantage over CDNs that prioritize North American coverage. Video start times and rebuffering rates are consistently among the best in the industry according to independent performance benchmarks.

Customizable Video Player

Bunny Stream includes a fully customizable HTML5 video player that can be embedded on any website. You can adjust the player's colors, controls, branding, captions, and behavior to match your website's design. The player supports chapters, thumbnail previews on timeline hover, multiple audio tracks, subtitle files in multiple languages, and keyboard navigation for accessibility. The embed code is lightweight and does not require any JavaScript frameworks or dependencies.

For businesses that use video as a marketing or educational tool -- course platforms, SaaS companies, media publishers -- the branded player is essential. Unlike YouTube embeds that display competitor recommendations and pull viewers away from your site, Bunny Stream's player keeps attention on your content. You control the experience entirely, without third-party branding or algorithmic suggestions competing for your viewer's attention.

DRM and Content Protection

Bunny Stream includes DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection using Widevine and FairPlay, the same DRM systems used by Netflix and Disney+. This prevents unauthorized downloading, screen recording (on supported devices), and hotlinking of your video content. For content creators, e-learning platforms, and media companies that monetize their video library, DRM protection is not optional -- it is essential to preventing piracy and protecting revenue.

Beyond DRM, Bunny Stream provides additional security features including signed URLs (time-limited access tokens), referrer restrictions (limiting which domains can embed your videos), geographic restrictions, and IP-based access controls. These layered security measures ensure your content is only accessible in the ways you intend, without the complexity of implementing a separate security solution.

Live Streaming

Bunny Stream supports live streaming alongside its video-on-demand capabilities. You can broadcast live events, webinars, or ongoing streams using RTMP ingest, which is compatible with popular broadcasting tools like OBS Studio, Streamlabs, and vMix. Live streams are automatically delivered through the global CDN with adaptive bitrate, ensuring a smooth viewing experience for audiences worldwide. After the broadcast ends, the live stream recording is automatically available as a video-on-demand asset.

The live streaming pricing follows the same transparent pay-as-you-go model as the rest of the platform. There are no per-viewer surcharges or concurrent viewer limits baked into the pricing -- you pay for the minutes delivered. For European businesses running regular webinars, live training sessions, or virtual events, this predictable pricing model is a welcome alternative to the per-viewer pricing that many competitors impose.

Analytics and Insights

Bunny Stream provides detailed analytics on video performance, including play counts, viewer engagement (how much of each video is watched), geographic distribution of viewers, device and browser breakdowns, and bandwidth consumption. These metrics are available through both the dashboard and API, allowing integration with your existing analytics stack. Engagement heatmaps show exactly where viewers drop off or rewatch sections, providing actionable insights for content optimization.

For e-learning platforms and course creators, the engagement analytics are particularly valuable. Knowing that 80% of viewers drop off at the 12-minute mark of a 20-minute lecture tells you exactly where the content needs improvement. For marketing teams, understanding which video assets drive the most complete views helps optimize content strategy without relying on third-party analytics tools that introduce additional tracking and privacy concerns.

Pricing: Radically Affordable

Bunny Stream's pricing is its most disruptive feature. Storage costs $0.005 per GB per month (half a cent), and delivery through the CDN starts at $0.01 per GB. Transcoding is included at no additional charge. To put this in perspective: hosting 100 hours of video and delivering 10,000 views per month might cost around $5-15 total, depending on video length and quality. The same usage on Mux, Wistia, or Vimeo OTT would cost hundreds of dollars per month.

The pricing model is pure pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimums, no per-video fees, and no hidden surcharges. You pay only for what you use, which makes Bunny Stream equally accessible to a blogger hosting a handful of tutorial videos and to a media company streaming thousands of hours of content. The lack of complex pricing tiers or artificial feature gates is refreshing in a market where billing opacity is the norm.

API and Developer Experience

Bunny Stream provides a comprehensive REST API for programmatic video management. You can upload, encode, organize, and deliver videos entirely through API calls, which makes it straightforward to integrate into custom platforms, CMS systems, or automated publishing workflows. The API documentation is clear and includes code examples for common languages. SDKs and community libraries exist for JavaScript, Python, PHP, and other popular languages.

For developers building video features into their applications, Bunny Stream's API-first approach is a significant advantage over platforms like Vimeo or Wistia, which are primarily designed around their own interfaces. The TUS protocol support for resumable uploads is particularly useful for handling large video files over unreliable connections, a common challenge for production workflows.

GDPR Compliance and European Infrastructure

As a Slovenian company operating within the European Union, bunny.net is fully GDPR compliant by default. Video content can be stored in European data centers, and the company's data processing agreements cover the requirements of European businesses in regulated industries. For organizations that need to demonstrate to their DPO or legal team that video content is processed exclusively within EU jurisdiction, Bunny Stream provides that assurance in a way that US-based platforms like Mux, Wistia, or AWS MediaConvert fundamentally cannot.

Who Should Use Bunny Stream?

Bunny Stream is the right choice for any business or creator that needs to host and deliver video without the budget constraints of enterprise platforms or the privacy compromises of YouTube. E-learning platforms benefit from DRM protection, engagement analytics, and the customizable player. Media companies and publishers value the global CDN performance and pay-as-you-go pricing at massive scale. SaaS companies embedding product demos and tutorials appreciate the branded player and API-first workflow. And any European business that needs video hosting with guaranteed GDPR compliance will find Bunny Stream to be the most cost-effective option on the market.

Businesses needing advanced real-time video features like interactive live streaming, virtual event platforms, or video conferencing should look elsewhere -- Bunny Stream is optimized for video-on-demand and standard live streaming, not interactive real-time communication. But for hosting, encoding, protecting, and delivering video content at scale, it is hard to find a better value proposition anywhere in the world, let alone in Europe.