Screenbird vs Xibo: which digital signage platform fits your screens?

A side-by-side, fact-checked comparison of pricing, features, and everyday fit between Screenbird and Xibo, so you can pick the right platform without a sales call.

Last verified: July 2026
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The verdict

On sticker price, Xibo Cloud is cheaper than Screenbird: its plans run from £3.50 per display per month against Screenbird's EUR 12 per screen per month billed annually. What the sticker doesn't show is where Screenbird earns the difference: the player apps are part of that price on every supported platform, where Xibo sells them as separate paid licences per display, plus 10 GB of storage per screen instead of cloud allowances measured in single gigabytes, live screen mirroring from any desktop browser, and a maintained 15-language dashboard.

Xibo's actual proposition is something else entirely: an open-source CMS with 17 years of development that technical teams can self-host for free and adapt to their needs. If you have the ops bench for that, self-hosting is what Xibo is built for. If you want signage that just runs, with no Docker stack, licence math, or bandwidth budgeting, Screenbird is the simpler buy.

At a glance

ScreenbirdEvery planEUR 12per screen / month
XiboBusiness (Cloud)£5.50per screen / month
Browser-based laptop screen casting
Player apps included
Windows player free; Android, webOS, Tizen & ChromeOS are paid licences per display
Storage & bandwidth
10 GB storage per screen included1 to 2 GB storage and 4 to 8 GB bandwidth per month on Cloud plans
Proof of play
Dashboard languages
15 languages, maintained setCommunity-translated, no fixed set
Open-source self-hosting available
Works on your existing screens/players
Free trial

Prices verified July 14, 2026. Currencies shown as billed (EUR vs GBP), not converted.

Sources: Xibo pricing, Xibo hosting and regions, Xibo open source, Xibo screen-mirror community thread, Xibo Docker self-host documentation. Xibo is a trademark of its owner. Screenbird is not affiliated with or endorsed by Xibo.

Walk-up screen sharing: browser casting vs. encoder hardware

Screenbird includes live screen mirroring on every plan, from any desktop browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari), with no extra app or hardware to buy. The connection is peer-to-peer: someone in a meeting room or classroom shares their laptop screen straight to the TV in a few clicks, and the video stream never passes through Screenbird's servers.

Xibo has no browser-based laptop or device screen casting. A feature request for it exists on Xibo's community forum, where the suggested workaround is external HDMI-encoder hardware feeding a video stream into a layout. To be precise about a feature that sounds similar: Xibo's Mirrored Sync Group keeps content synchronized across multiple displays, which is a video-wall capability, not screen mirroring.

If ad-hoc laptop sharing to a screen is part of your day, that is a hardware project on Xibo and a built-in feature on Screenbird.

See how Screenbird screen mirroring works

The sticker price vs. the all-in price

Let's keep the concession on the table: Xibo Cloud starts cheaper. Professional is from £3.50 per display per month, Business is £5.50, and Enterprise is £9.00. Screenbird is EUR 12 per screen per month billed annually (EUR 15 billed monthly). On the sticker alone, Xibo wins.

The all-in picture is closer than it looks. On Xibo, the player apps for Android, webOS, Tizen, and ChromeOS are paid commercial licences per display on top of the plan (the Windows player is the free one), and the Cloud tiers carry allowances of 1 to 2 GB of storage and 4 to 8 GB of monthly bandwidth per their cloud documentation. SAML SSO starts at the Business tier, and extended proof-of-play retention sits on Enterprise. On Screenbird, the EUR 12 covers the player apps on every supported platform, 10 GB of storage per screen, screen mirroring, and every feature, with nothing licensed separately.

For a fleet of Windows-driven displays with light content, Xibo Cloud can cost less. For non-Windows players or media-heavy rotations, the licence and headroom math narrows the gap quickly, and predictability is the point of Screenbird's flat price.

Self-hosting: freedom with a workload

Xibo's CMS is AGPLv3-licensed and self-hostable for free, with 17 years of development behind features like DataSets, granular permissions, and multi-zone layouts. For a technical team that wants full ownership, that is a distinct offer in this category.

Xibo's own documentation is equally honest about what running it takes: Docker on Ubuntu x86-64 with five containers (CMS, MySQL, XMR, Memcached, and QuickChart), root access, a VPS with around 2 GB of RAM, and port 9505 reachable for remote displays. Their own pricing page puts it plainly: self-hosting has "a higher total cost of ownership than choosing a plan".

Screenbird takes the opposite trade: nothing to host, patch, or monitor, at a flat per-screen price. Which side of that trade you want is probably the single best way to choose between these two platforms.

When Xibo is the better fit

You want a fully open-source platform you can self-host for free (AGPLv3), owning the whole stack with no per-screen SaaS fee.
You have a technical team and want one-time perpetual player licences: genuine no-recurring-fee economics at scale.
You want a long-established open-source CMS (17+ years of development) with DataSets, granular permissions, multi-zone layouts, and an active community.

When Screenbird is the better fit

You want walk-up laptop sharing from a browser on every plan, without encoder hardware.
You want one flat all-in price: player apps on every supported platform, 10 GB per screen, and every feature included, with no licence math.
You want a dashboard maintained in 15 languages rather than community-translated coverage.
You want nothing to host: no Docker stack, no server to patch, no ports to open.

Moving from Xibo to Screenbird

Switching platforms does not mean replacing your screens. Here is what it actually takes.

1

Keep your existing screens

Screenbird runs on the devices Xibo fleets already use: Android players, Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, Raspberry Pi, plus Fire TV and any browser. No new hardware is required to start.

2

Bring your content over

Upload your existing images, videos, and playlists into Screenbird's file library and rebuild your playlists in minutes.

3

Pair and go live

Pair each screen with a short on-screen code from the dashboard, push your first playlist, and it's live. There is no CMS to install or maintain.

Frequently asked questions

Everything about how Screenbird compares to Xibo.

Yes, if you want a fully managed platform where one flat price covers everything: player apps on every supported platform, 10 GB of storage per screen, every feature, and live screen mirroring. If you have a technical team and want to self-host an open-source CMS for free, that is exactly the use case Xibo is built for.
On sticker price, yes: Xibo Cloud runs from £3.50 to £9.00 per display per month against Screenbird's EUR 12 billed annually. The all-in comparison is closer, because Xibo's Android, webOS, Tizen, and ChromeOS players are paid licences per display and its Cloud plans carry storage and bandwidth allowances, while Screenbird's price includes the players, 10 GB per screen, and every feature.
Xibo has no browser-based laptop or device casting; a community feature request exists, and the suggested workaround is external HDMI-encoder hardware. Its Mirrored Sync Group feature synchronizes content across displays (a video-wall capability), which is not screen mirroring. Screenbird includes peer-to-peer laptop mirroring from any desktop browser on every plan.
The Xibo CMS is free, open-source software (AGPLv3) you can self-host. Xibo Cloud is a paid service, and on both routes most player platforms (Android, webOS, Tizen, ChromeOS) require paid commercial licences per display; the Windows player is the free one. Xibo's own pricing page notes that self-hosting has "a higher total cost of ownership than choosing a plan".
In many cases, yes. Screenbird runs on Android players, Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, Raspberry Pi, Fire TV, and in any browser, so the devices driving Xibo displays today can typically be repointed at Screenbird directly.
Not on Screenbird: there is one plan and proof of play is in it. And to be fair to Xibo, proof of play is included on all its Cloud tiers as well; only extended retention is tied to its Enterprise tier.
Screenbird's dashboard ships in 15 languages as a maintained set. Xibo's CMS is community-translated via Launchpad without an official fixed set; per community documentation, its Windows player is English-only and its Android player ships 6 languages.
Screenbird includes 10 GB of storage per screen, with paid upsell tiers beyond that. Xibo Cloud's plans carry 1 to 2 GB of storage and 4 to 8 GB of monthly bandwidth per Xibo's cloud documentation; a self-hosted Xibo is limited only by your own server.

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