The honest answer is that you can run an internet radio station for nothing, and most people should start there. The interesting question is what happens after that — because the costs that eventually show up are rarely the ones people budget for.
Nearly everyone asking this question is worried about the platform fee. In practice that's the smallest line on the bill. The two things that actually cost money are music licensing, if you play commercial records, and bandwidth, once people are genuinely listening. Here are real numbers for both.
The Short Answer
| If you're… | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Starting out, talk or royalty-free music, small audience | $0 |
| Running a real station with music playing around the clock | $5–30 |
| Playing commercial music, properly licensed | $60–150+ |
| Self-hosting everything on your own server | $5–15, plus your time |
The jump from the first row to the third isn't the software. It's the music.
What the Platform Costs
This is the part people compare hardest, and it's where the least money is at stake.
| Option | Cost | What you're paying for |
|---|---|---|
| GoCast Free | $0 | Live broadcasting, 100 listeners, player page |
| GoCast Pro | $20/mo | Music that plays 24/7, 1,000 listeners |
| AzuraCast on your own server | $5–15/mo | Everything, if you're willing to run it yourself |
| Radio.co | $29–99/mo | Managed hosting, scheduling, support |
| Live365 | $59+/mo | Hosting with US music licensing bundled in |
Two of those prices include something the others don't. Live365 is expensive because the fee covers your US licensing, which you'd otherwise arrange and pay for separately — so comparing it directly against a $20 platform is comparing different things. And a $5 server is only $5 if your time is worth nothing; budget an evening to set it up and an hour here and there forever.
If you haven't broadcast yet, don't pay anything. Our guide to starting a station goes through the free options in detail. Most stations that fail do so in the first month, and a subscription doesn't change that.
Music Licensing: The Cost Nobody Warns You About
This is the big one, and it splits cleanly in three.
Talk content is free. Podcasts, sermons, sports commentary, interviews, community radio without records — no music licensing applies. If this is you, your costs stop at hosting, and this whole section doesn't affect you.
Royalty-free and Creative Commons music is free. Free Music Archive, Mixkit, Chosic and ccMixter have large catalogues you can broadcast, and plenty of independent artists release under licences that allow it with credit. The quality is genuinely good now. This is how most small stations avoid the problem entirely.
Commercial music is where the money goes. Playing chart records means paying the rights bodies — SoundExchange, ASCAP and BMI in the US, and their equivalents elsewhere. What you pay depends on your country, your audience size, and how many songs you play, so anyone quoting you one flat number is guessing. Budget in the tens per month at hobby scale and expect it to climb with your listener count, and check your own country's bodies rather than assuming the US rules apply.
The practical takeaway: if you want to play commercial music from day one, a platform that bundles licensing is often cheaper than assembling it yourself, even at $59 a month. If you can build your station on royalty-free music or talk, you skip the largest cost in internet radio altogether.
Bandwidth: The Cost That Grows With You
Every listener is a separate copy of your stream going out over the internet. That's the whole economics of radio hosting in one sentence, and it's why every free tier has a listener cap.
At the usual 128 kbps, one listener uses about 58 MB an hour. So:
| Station | Data per month |
|---|---|
| 10 listeners, 2 hours a day | ~35 GB |
| 50 listeners, 4 hours a day | ~350 GB |
| 100 listeners, around the clock | ~4 TB |
| 500 listeners, around the clock | ~20 TB |
A typical $10 VPS includes one or two terabytes a month. Read the table again and you'll see where self-hosting stops being cheap: it's not the server, it's the traffic. A station that succeeds is a station whose hosting bill grows, on any platform, including ours.
You can cut it roughly in half by streaming at 64–96 kbps instead of 128. For talk content that's an easy trade — most listeners won't hear the difference on speech. For music, 128 is where most stations land.
Equipment: Less Than You Think
You need a computer, an internet connection with about 1 Mbps upload, and a microphone. Your laptop's built-in mic is fine for your first broadcasts, and a $40 USB condenser mic is enough for a long time after that.
Mixers, audio interfaces, acoustic foam and broadcast-grade microphones are real upgrades, and none of them will get you a single listener. Buy equipment when your audience gives you a reason to, not before.
The Costs People Forget
- A domain name — $10–15 a year if you want your own address rather than a link on someone else's.
- Artwork — $0 if you make it yourself, $50–200 if you commission a logo and station art. Worth it later, not first.
- Moving platforms — costs no money and a lot of goodwill. Every listener has to re-tune. Choosing something you can grow into is cheaper than choosing the cheapest thing now.
- Your time — the largest cost in internet radio by a wide margin, and the one nobody puts in a spreadsheet. A weekly two-hour show is roughly fifteen hours a month once you count planning and promotion.
What We Charge, and Why
Since this article is on our own site, here's our side of it plainly.
GoCast is free for live broadcasting, with no card and no time limit: your microphone, music from your own machine, a page you can share, and up to a hundred people listening at once. That covers a lot of stations completely.
Two things cost us real money, and they're the two things Pro charges for. Listeners cost bandwidth, which is why every plan has a ceiling — ours is 100 on Free and 1,000 on Pro. And a station playing around the clock is using a machine around the clock, whether or not anyone is tuned in, which is why unattended playout is the paid line rather than something we can hand out for free to everyone.
Pro is $20 a month, and you buy it from your dashboard. What Pro actually does is written up separately.
Three Realistic Budgets
The hobbyist — $0/month. Free platform, talk or royalty-free music, laptop mic, a link you share yourself. This is where everyone should start, and plenty of stations never need to leave.
The committed station — $20–35/month. Paid platform so the station plays when you're not there, your own domain, a decent USB mic. Still no licensing cost, because the music is royalty-free or the content is talk.
The commercial-music station — $60–150+/month. Hosting plus proper licensing, which is most of that number. Worth it if you have the audience to justify it, and expensive to discover you don't.
The trap is starting at the third budget. Start free, find out whether you enjoy broadcasting and whether anyone shows up, and let the costs arrive when the station has earned them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I run an internet radio station for free?
Yes. A free platform, talk content or royalty-free music, and the microphone in your laptop will get you a real station with no cost at all. The free tier on GoCast has no card and no time limit, and handles up to a hundred listeners at once.
Why do I have to pay for music licensing?
Because broadcasting a recording to the public is a separate right from owning a copy of it. Buying the album, or paying for a streaming subscription, doesn't cover playing it on a station. Royalty-free and Creative Commons catalogues exist precisely to avoid this, and that's the route most small stations take.
How much bandwidth does an internet radio station use?
About 58 MB per listener per hour at 128 kbps. Ten listeners for two hours a day is roughly 35 GB a month; a hundred listeners around the clock is about 4 TB. Streaming at 64–96 kbps roughly halves it, which is an easy trade for talk content.
Is it cheaper to self-host?
At a small scale, yes on paper — $5 to $15 a month for a server. It stops being cheaper once you count your time setting it up and keeping it running, and once your audience pushes you past the traffic your server plan includes.
What does it cost to start, on day one?
Nothing, and it should be nothing. Sign up somewhere free, broadcast for eight weeks, then decide what's worth paying for. You'll know far more about what you need by then than any article can tell you.