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Shadow vs Sunshine: catalog facts
Shadow	Sunshine
Paid Paid subscription; the homepage showed a discount offer.	Free Free and open source under the GPL 3.0, from the LizardByte project.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, Web	Windows, macOS, Linux
Full Windows PC, so any launcher, mod or app can be installed Clients for most desktop and mobile platforms plus a browser	Works with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA hardware encoders, not just NVIDIA Configured and paired from a web interface in any browser
Ongoing subscription cost Needs a fast, stable internet connection	macOS hosts cannot emulate gamepads at all Encoder support varies a lot by platform and graphics vendor
Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service	Downloadable app
Closed source	Open source
License not stated	License: GPL-3.0
Account needed	No account needed
Needs internet	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 24, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.