mediasoup, created by Iñaki Baz Castillo and contributors, is one of the most-used open-source WebRTC SFUs. The data plane is C++ for performance — RTP forwarding, congestion control, layered simulcast/SVC handling — while the control plane is exposed as Node.js objects, so application code uses familiar JavaScript while the heavy lifting happens in native code. The architecture is built around Workers (one C++ process per CPU core) coordinated by the Node.js main process.
mediasoup's strengths are: high per-core RTP forwarding throughput (often quoted at 1000+ concurrent participants per server), simulcast and SVC support, fine-grained API for custom application logic, mature documentation and community. Daily.co, the largest commercial deployment of mediasoup, built their entire video infrastructure on it. BigBlueButton, the open-source classroom video platform, switched from Kurento to mediasoup in 2020.
Compared to LiveKit (Go-based, slightly higher-level API) and Janus (C, plugin-based architecture), mediasoup sits in the middle — more programmable than LiveKit's higher-level model, more JavaScript-friendly than Janus's C-plugin world. The choice usually depends on your team's language preference and how much custom application logic you need to layer on. mediasoup is actively maintained with several releases per year through 2026.
The book · Volume 3 of 7
Video Streaming: A Complete Guide to Video Delivery: From ABR and CDNs to Players, WebRTC, DRM, and the Economics of Streaming
mediasoup gives you a fast C++ SFU core, but routing, scaling across workers and simulcast layer selection stay your application's job. This volume covers WebRTC media servers like mediasoup in detail, including SFU design, simulcast and SVC forwarding, congestion control in real-time calls and the cost of running conferencing at scale. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
Building on mediasoup and unsure how to scale it past a single server?
We will review your mediasoup architecture and return a scaling plan covering worker and router layout, cross-server piping and capacity numbers per room size. 250+ video products shipped since 2005.
