Internet radio hosting from €1.99 a month, and exactly what that includes

MAWCast plans start at €1.99 a month. That buys one station with up to 100 listeners at once, 128 kbps and 5 GB of storage. Air (€4.99) carries 500 listeners at once, and from Broadcast (€9.99) there is no listener cap. There is no free plan; there is a 3-day trial. Prices include VAT.

What does each plan cost and include?

Two things to read carefully. Live quality and AutoDJ quality are separate figures: on Air and above you can broadcast live at 320 kbps, while AutoDJ plays at 256 kbps. And on Broadcast and Network the storage is shared by every station in the workspace, not given to each one. See how plan limits apply to a station.

What is included on every plan?

• AutoDJ: playlists, a rotation and a queue, playing whenever nobody is live. It plays what you upload: MP3 is kept as it is, and WAV, OGG, M4A and FLAC are converted to MP3 at 320 kbps after upload. See how AutoDJ fills the gaps between shows and AutoDJ.
• A media library with uploads of up to 150 MB per file (about an hour at 320 kbps). Media library.
• A show schedule for your station's week, which your public page reads to say what is coming up. Schedule.
• A public station page at yourstation.mawcast.com, with a player, listener chat and reactions. Public page.
• A web player you can embed on your own site, set up in Control → Web Player. Web player.
• Broadcast sessions: each live broadcast is kept as a record of who was on, when, what played and what happened technically. Session history is unlimited on every plan. Broadcast sessions.
• Listener analytics: current listeners, peaks, averages and a listener timeline while you are on air, and permanent historical analytics afterwards. Analytics.
• MAWCast Studio, our Windows desktop broadcaster, free: sign in, pick your station, press GO LIVE. There are no connection settings to copy.
• Your own encoder, if you prefer. Connect BUTT, Mixxx or VirtualDJ; see Icecast hosting.
• A team: the number of team members with broadcaster permissions grows with the plan (see the table above).
• MAW Assistant on Discord: notifications, quick actions and diagnostics. Broadcast and Network add questions in plain language. MAW Assistant.
• Control, the web app you run the station from, in seven languages.

Is Starter enough for my station?

These are Starter's limits, and what each one means in practice.

100 listeners at once

The limit is set on your station in the stream server itself. When 100 people are listening, the next one cannot connect until someone leaves. Control shows the current listener count and your peaks (live listeners), so you can see how close you are to the limit. If you expect more than about a hundred people at the same moment, for example during a Discord event, start on Air.

128 kbps, live and AutoDJ

Starter's live quality is 128 kbps: set your encoder to it. An encoder sending more is re-encoded to 128 kbps on its way to air. AutoDJ re-encodes every track to 128 kbps on its way to air, whatever the bitrate of the file.

Which bitrate to choose, and what each costs in data and storage, is worked out in what bitrate to use for internet radio.

5 GB of storage

A rough guide, worked out from the bitrate rather than measured: an MP3 at 128 kbps uses about 57.6 MB per hour (128,000 bits a second × 3,600 seconds ÷ 8), so 5 GB holds roughly 87 hours of music. A file uploaded as WAV, OGG, M4A or FLAC is stored as a 320 kbps MP3, about 144 MB per hour, which fits roughly 35 hours in 5 GB. Uploading MP3s at the bitrate you broadcast makes the most of the space. See supported formats and how shared storage works.

One station

Starter and Air hold one station each. A second station needs Broadcast (3 stations) or Network (10).

When is it worth moving up?

Air, €4.99. When you need more than 100 listeners at once (Air carries 500), live broadcasts at 320 kbps, AutoDJ at 256 kbps, or more room (25 GB).

Broadcast, €9.99. When you run more than one station (up to 3), need no listener cap, or want 100 GB shared across your stations. MAW Assistant also answers questions in plain language, you get 6 team members, and your listeners can use a custom domain.

Network, €19.99. Up to 10 stations and 500 GB shared, 20 team members, and an assistant that works across all of them.

An upgrade applies at once, and you pay the difference for the part of the period you have not used. A downgrade waits until the period you paid for ends and is not refunded. Your renewal date stays the same either way. See how upgrades and downgrades are billed.

How does the 3-day trial work?

• The trial is three days of Starter, and the trial itself costs nothing.
• It needs a verified payment method.
• One trial per payment method: a card that has already started a trial cannot start another, on any account.
• If you do not choose a plan, deletion of your files is scheduled five days after the trial ends. Choosing a plan in that window cancels it.

What happens if I stop paying or cancel?

Until the deletion date the account is suspended, not gone, and paying brings everything back as it was. A failed payment does not leave you owing anything. See how long files are kept.

What does no plan include?

• Music licences. A subscription carries your stream; it does not give you the right to play the recordings in it. See music licensing.
• A streaming server of your own. MAWCast is managed: your station runs on MAWCast's infrastructure, and there is no Icecast server for you to administer.
• Song requests, mobile apps, and AAC or Opus streams. MAWCast streams MP3 and does not offer these.

How do I compare cheap radio hosts?

An entry price tells you part of the story (see how MAWCast and Radio.co compare and how MAWCast and RadioKing compare). These are the questions worth asking any provider, with MAWCast's answers.

Start your station

Start your 3-day trial. If you want to see the setup first, read what setting up a station looks like.