Adding video to your application shouldn't require a team of video engineers. But for years, that's exactly what it's taken. Encoding pipelines, CDN configurations, adaptive bitrate streaming, player integrations—the list of things you need to get right is long, and getting any of them wrong means buffering wheels and frustrated users.
At Mux, we've spent the last eight years building the video infrastructure that powers some of the most demanding streaming experiences on the internet. Companies like Spotify, TED, Robinhood, and thousands of others use Mux to handle their video so they can focus on building their actual products.
This guide walks you through what Mux offers, how it works, and why it might be the right fit for your next video project.
What Mux actually does
Mux is a video API platform that handles everything from ingesting your video files to delivering them to viewers around the world. When you upload a video or start a live stream, we encode it, optimize it for every device and network condition, and deliver it through our global infrastructure. You get a playback URL. Your viewers get a smooth streaming experience.
The whole point is abstraction. You shouldn't need to understand the difference between HLS and DASH, or know which CDN performs best in Southeast Asia, or figure out why Safari is handling your streams differently than Chrome. Mux handles all of that behind the scenes.
Getting started with Mux Video
The fastest way to add on-demand video streaming to your website is through Mux's Video API. Here's what that looks like in practice.
First, you create an asset by pointing us to your video file:
const Mux = require('@mux/mux-node');
const mux = new Mux();
const asset = await mux.video.assets.create({
input: [{ url: 'https://your-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/video.mp4' }],
playback_policy: ['public'],
});Mux accepts nearly any video format and handles the encoding automatically. We generate multiple renditions at different quality levels—from 360p up through 4K—so viewers always get the best quality their connection can support. The encoding happens in minutes, not hours.
Once your asset is ready, you get a playback ID that works anywhere:
<mux-player
playback-id="your-playback-id"
metadata-video-title="My Video"
></mux-player>That's Mux Player, our open-source player component. It's built on web components, works with React, Vue, or vanilla JavaScript, and includes features like preview thumbnails, keyboard shortcuts, and responsive sizing out of the box.
How Mux handles live streaming
Live streaming with Mux follows a similar pattern. You create a live stream via the API, which gives you RTMP and SRT ingest points:
const liveStream = await mux.video.liveStreams.create({
playback_policy: ['public'],
new_asset_settings: { playback_policy: ['public'] },
});
console.log(liveStream.stream_key);
console.log(liveStream.rtmps_ingest);Point your encoder (OBS, vMix, your phone—whatever) at the ingest URL with your stream key, and you're live. When you end the stream, Mux automatically creates a VOD asset from the recording. No additional API calls, no waiting for re-encoding. The asset is ready for playback almost immediately.
This automatic archiving is useful for a lot of workflows: recording webinars for later viewing, preserving live events, or building a searchable library from live content. The VOD asset inherits the same playback infrastructure as any other Mux video.
AI features that actually save you time
Here's something that used to require stitching together multiple services: automatically generating captions and transcripts for your videos. With Mux, you add a parameter to your asset creation:
const asset = await mux.video.assets.create({
input: [{ url: 'https://example.com/video.mp4' }],
playback_policy: ['public'],
auto_generated_captions: [{ language: 'en' }],
});Mux handles the transcription and returns WebVTT caption tracks that work in Mux Player and any standard video player. We support 20+ languages, and the captions are accurate enough to use in production (though you can always edit them if needed). This is included in your Mux account—no separate AI service to configure, no additional billing to track.
Captions aren't just an accessibility feature (though they absolutely are that). They also help with SEO, improve engagement in sound-off environments like social feeds, and make your content searchable. When everything is handled in one platform, you don't have to coordinate transcription timing with video encoding or worry about sync issues.
Building both video and audio experiences
Mux handles audio-only content just as easily as video. If you're building a platform that needs podcasts, music streaming, or voice recordings alongside video content, the same API works for both:
<mux-audio
playback-id="your-audio-playback-id"
></mux-audio>The <mux-audio> component is the audio equivalent of Mux Player. Same ease of integration, same playback infrastructure, same analytics. You don't need a separate audio provider for audio-only content.
How Mux pricing works
Video infrastructure can get expensive fast, which is why we've put a lot of thought into pricing that scales with actual usage rather than theoretical capacity.
Mux prices by the minute—minutes of video stored, minutes of video encoded, and minutes of video delivered. This is intentional. The value of video isn't in how many gigabytes you're transferring; it's in the time your viewers spend watching. Pricing by the minute also means we don't have incentive to inflate bitrates just to charge more for bandwidth.
For different use cases, we offer pricing levers that let you optimize costs:
Resolution-based pricing: Videos at 720p or lower cost less for encoding, storage, and delivery. If you're building an app where SD quality makes sense—think user-generated content, background videos, or mobile-first experiences—you automatically pay less.
Video quality levels: We offer multiple encoding quality tiers. The baseline tier is optimized for simpler streaming use cases and includes free encoding. For content where quality matters most, premium encoding delivers better visual quality at the same bitrate.
Automatic cold storage: Videos that haven't been watched in 60 days move to cheaper storage automatically. If someone does request them, they're restored on-demand. For platforms with large back catalogs, this can reduce storage costs by up to 60%.
We also offer a free tier that lets you build and test without a credit card. You can stream real video to real users and only pay when you exceed the free limits.
Global delivery without managing a CDN
One of the harder parts of video at scale is delivery. You need points of presence close to your viewers, redundancy when things go wrong, and the ability to handle traffic spikes without advance planning.
Mux operates a global delivery network with presence on every continent. When a viewer in Tokyo requests your video, they get it from a server in Asia. When someone in São Paulo watches the same content, they're served from South America. You don't configure any of this; it just works.
This isn't marketing fluff about "global reach." It's the practical reality that video quality depends heavily on geography. A viewer 10,000 miles from your server will experience more buffering than one 500 miles away, no matter how fast their connection is. Our infrastructure handles the geographic distribution so you don't have to think about it.
Analytics that help you understand viewer experience
Mux Data is our video analytics product. It integrates with Mux Video automatically but also works with any video player or streaming infrastructure—even if you're not using Mux for delivery.
The analytics focus on viewer experience: playback failures, rebuffering rates, startup time, engagement metrics. You can segment by browser, device, geography, or custom dimensions you define. When something goes wrong, you can dig into individual sessions to understand what happened.
This isn't just dashboards for the sake of dashboards. When you can see that viewers in a specific region are experiencing higher error rates, or that a particular browser version is causing problems, you can actually fix things. Most video platforms give you views and play rates. That's table stakes. Understanding quality is what lets you improve.
SDKs for every platform you care about
Mux provides official SDKs for the platforms where developers actually build:
Server-side: Node.js, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP, Elixir, Java, .NET
Client-side: React, React Native, iOS (Swift), Android (Kotlin), Flutter
Framework integrations: Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit, Remix, Laravel, WordPress
The SDKs aren't wrappers around HTTP requests with minimal documentation. They include TypeScript types, follow platform conventions, and handle the details that would otherwise trip you up—things like authentication, pagination, and error handling.
For upload workflows, we have dedicated uploader SDKs that handle chunked uploads, resumability, and progress tracking. Large files and unreliable connections are realities of video; our upload tools are built with those realities in mind.
Player options that fit your stack
We mentioned Mux Player earlier. It's our recommended way to play Mux videos because it's optimized for our streaming infrastructure, includes built-in analytics, and supports features like preview thumbnails without additional configuration.
But we recognize that many developers have existing player investments. Mux works with any HLS-compatible player: Video.js (which we maintain), hls.js, Shaka Player, JW Player, Bitmovin, and others. Our player SDKs for iOS and Android integrate with the native player frameworks (AVPlayer and Media3) rather than forcing you into a custom player.
If you want something between "drop in our player" and "configure everything yourself," Media Chrome is our toolkit for building custom player UIs. It's a set of web components that handle player controls, and you can compose them however you want. Some of the most interesting player implementations we've seen started with Media Chrome.
When Mux makes sense
Mux is a good fit if you're building something where video is important but not your core competency. You want reliable infrastructure that doesn't require a dedicated video team to maintain. You want to ship faster than you could if you were stitching together encoding, storage, CDN, and player solutions yourself.
Mux is particularly popular with:
Developer platforms and tools: Companies like Vercel, GitHub, and Notion use Mux for video features in their products. The API-first approach fits their technical culture.
AI companies: When you're generating video content programmatically, you need infrastructure that can handle unpredictable workloads. Mux scales automatically; you don't need to provision capacity in advance.
Media and entertainment: From fitness platforms to streaming services to corporate communications, Mux handles demanding video workloads for businesses where video quality directly impacts revenue.
E-commerce and marketplaces: Product videos, user-generated content, live shopping—video is increasingly central to online commerce. Mux helps platforms move fast without building video expertise in-house.
Getting started
You can sign up for Mux at mux.com and start streaming video in minutes. No credit card required for the free tier.
Our documentation lives at mux.com/docs and includes quickstarts for most common use cases, API references, and guides that go deeper on specific topics. If you run into questions, our support team actually understands video (because video is all we do).
If you've been maintaining your own video infrastructure—or avoiding video because it seemed too complex—Mux might let you ship that feature you've been putting off. The internet needs more video, and it shouldn't take a team of video experts to make it happen.
FAQ
How do I add on-demand video streaming to my website using a video API?
With Mux, you upload or link to your video file via the API, and we return a playback ID. Embed Mux Player using that ID, and streaming works across all browsers and devices. The encoding, adaptive bitrate streaming, and global delivery are handled automatically.
Can I use Mux to record live streams and turn them into searchable VOD content?
Yes. When you create a live stream with Mux, you can enable automatic recording. When the stream ends, the recording becomes a VOD asset immediately—no re-encoding delay. Add auto-generated captions to make the content searchable by spoken words.
Does Mux support RTMP ingest and HLS output?
Mux supports RTMP and SRT for live stream ingest, and outputs HLS and DASH for playback. You can point any standard encoder at our ingest URLs, and viewers get adaptive streaming through Mux Player or any HLS-compatible player.
What AI features does Mux offer for video processing?
Mux provides automatic caption and transcript generation for on-demand videos. Add a parameter to your API call, and we return WebVTT caption tracks in 20+ supported languages. This happens during encoding—no separate AI service to configure.
Mux also has the @mux/ai SDK which can be used to interact with the Mux API and 3rd party AI models like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Gemini.
How does Mux compare to building my own FFmpeg pipeline?
Mux replaces the encoding, storage, CDN, and player infrastructure you'd otherwise have to build and maintain. You POST a video URL to our API; we handle the FFmpeg encoding, generate HLS/DASH outputs, distribute globally, and give you a player. You get the same control through API parameters without operating the infrastructure.
Is Mux affordable for startups and smaller projects?
Mux offers a free tier with no credit card required, pay-as-you-go pricing that scales with usage, and pricing levers (resolution-based pricing, encoding tiers, automatic cold storage) that let you optimize costs for your specific use case.
Can I use Mux with Video.js?
Yes. Mux created Video.js in 2010, and it remains the most popular open-source web video player. Our playback URLs work directly with Video.js, and our Data SDK integrates with Video.js for analytics. We also offer Mux Player, which is built on newer web component technology, as an alternative.