Moonlight Game Streaming vs Sunshine

Moonlight Game Streaming sends games from a gaming PC to supported devices for remote play. It is a free, open-source implementation of NVIDIA's GameStream protocol; the listed plan costs nothing, with no subscriptions or paid versions with extra features. Clients are available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Apple TV, ChromeOS, Steam Link, and Raspberry Pi. On a capable client, Moonlight can stream a full Windows desktop at up to 4K with HDR. Its PC client supports up to 120 FPS and can disable V-Sync for lower latency. Users can host their own gaming server using options such as port forwarding, IPv6, ZeroTier, Tailscale, and NordVPN Meshnet. Moonlight recommends Sunshine as a host; GeForce Experience is also listed as compatible, though NVIDIA is discontinuing its GameStream feature. Wolf can stream games and applications running in Docker containers. There is no pure web client because the protocol requires raw TCP and UDP sockets that browsers do not support. The project began as a 2013 hackathon project by Case Western Reserve University students.

Sunshine is a free, self-hosted game-streaming host for Moonlight clients, running on your own hardware. It supports AMD, Intel, and Nvidia hardware encoding, with software encoding also available. A web interface lets you configure the host and pair clients from a browser, including on mobile devices. Moonlight clients are listed for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Xbox, and more. Sunshine emulates Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series, DualShock 4, DualSense, and Nintendo Switch Pro controllers. Host compatibility includes FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, and Windows, with features varying by system. Listed maximums are 4K resolution and 120 fps. Minimum requirements include 4 GB RAM, a supported GPU, and 5 GHz 802.11ac networks for host and client. Sunshine is GPL-3.0 licensed and distributed through several package sources.