Blue Iris alternative
No Windows box in a cupboard. No separate AI server to keep alive.
Ividiyo is self-hosted NVR and VMS software for ONVIF and RTSP cameras, with object detection and plate recognition built into the product rather than handed off to an external AI service. Free for up to 10 cameras.
Blue Iris has earned its following. It is a one-off purchase rather than a subscription, it gives you extraordinarily fine-grained control over each camera, and the community around it has answered almost every question anyone could have. For four cameras on a Windows machine that already exists, it is very hard to argue with.
The constraints are structural rather than quality problems. It is Windows-only and licensed to a single PC, so growth means a bigger Windows machine rather than a second recorder. Its AI detection is delegated to an external service — CodeProject.AI Server, or DeepStack before it — which is a separate installation to configure, update and keep running. And it is built around one person at one machine, so multiple operators, role-based access and a real audit trail are not what it is for.
People usually start looking when a house becomes a smallholding, when a second building needs covering, when the Windows box becomes the thing that keeps failing, or when someone other than the owner needs access.
Where the two differ structurally. Blue Iris's documented platform requirement and licensing model are the basis for the first column.
| Blue Iris | Ividiyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, or an equivalent Windows Server. Windows only. | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on x86, or Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on a Pi 4 or 5. A Pi 5 with an SSD makes a complete, silent, low-power recorder. |
| Licence | A one-off purchase, licensed to a single PC, with optional paid support tiers. | Free for up to 10 cameras with no key and no expiry. Home is R850 a year for the AI features at the same camera count. Professional and Enterprise are available perpetually as well as annually. |
| AI detection | Delegated to an external AI server such as CodeProject.AI, installed and maintained separately alongside Blue Iris. | Built into the product: object detection and tracking, licence plate recognition, appearance search, heatmaps and video synopsis, on an NVIDIA GPU, a Hailo HAT or a Coral accelerator. One installation, one thing to keep running. |
| Scaling out | One machine. More cameras means a larger Windows PC rather than a second recorder. | Multi-server from Professional upward: recording servers added as the site grows, under one management interface, with federated multi-site and automatic failover on Enterprise. |
| Multiple users | Built around a single administrator, with basic user accounts for remote viewing. | Role-based access control per location, so a site manager sees their own site and nobody else's, plus a tamper-evident audit log recording who viewed, exported and changed what. |
| Remote access | Port forwarding to the Windows machine, or a third-party tunnel. | An end-to-end encrypted relay with no port forwarding required, with direct peer-to-peer when the network allows. iOS and Android apps are included on every tier, including Free. |
| Interface | A Windows desktop application, with a web and mobile interface alongside it. | A browser for everything, on any machine on the network, plus the mobile apps. |
Blue Iris platform and licensing details reflect the product's published requirements as at October 2026. Prices and support tiers change — check the vendor's current terms before comparing.
None of these is a criticism of Blue Iris. They are just the edges of what it is built for.
A VMS is a service that must run unattended for years. If the recorder's reboots, updates and driver problems are the main source of downtime on your site, moving the recording to a Linux machine or a Pi removes a whole category of them.
Blue Iris plus CodeProject.AI is two services, two update cycles and two places for detection to quietly stop. When detection is part of the VMS, there is one thing to watch — and a watchdog that restarts it if it ever stops producing.
A spouse, a guard company, an estate manager, a second branch. Once more than one person uses the system, you need accounts, permissions scoped to locations and a record of who looked at what.
A second building, a workshop, a holiday house. Multi-server recording under one management interface is a different architecture from a second copy of a single-machine product.
No. It is built for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on x86 and Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on a Pi 4 or 5. For people moving off Blue Iris that is usually the point: the recorder stops being a Windows desktop that needs looking after and becomes a service that starts on boot and stays up.
For a home or small site, yes. A Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB and a USB 3.0 SSD records comfortably, and a Hailo AI HAT adds object detection. It draws a fraction of the power of a Windows machine, makes no noise and has no fans or spinning disks to fail. A Pi 4 with 8 GB works too, with a Coral USB accelerator for AI.
No. Object detection, tracking, plate recognition, appearance search, heatmaps and video synopsis are part of the product and run on a GPU or AI accelerator you attach to the same machine. There is no second service to install, no API key to configure and no second thing that can silently stop.
Yes, and it is not a trial. Ten cameras with live view, continuous and motion recording, playback, clip export, ONVIF discovery and the iOS and Android apps, with no licence key, no card and no expiry. The AI features are what the paid tiers add — R850 a year on Home at the same ten cameras.
Yes. Anything that speaks ONVIF or RTSP works, which is what Blue Iris connects to as well, so the cameras, their settings and their mounting all stay exactly as they are.
The Free tier runs up to 10 cameras with live view, recording, playback and clip export — no licence key, no time limit, no card. Point it at the cameras you already own and see what it does before anything changes.
Need something to send on? Download the product brochure (PDF) — it carries this comparison and the pricing.