Enhanced IRL and BELABOX Cloud are not the same kind of thing

Q: Does BELABOX Cloud cost $10 a month?

It is not a product you buy in a checkout: access to BELABOX Cloud comes with sponsoring the project on GitHub, or with a voucher from the BELABOX shop. This page explains what each sponsorship tier actually includes, what the figure people quote really is, and how that compares with paying for a service.

Prices for other services on this page were taken from their official websites on August 27, 2026 and copied without rounding or currency conversion. They may have changed since; check before you buy.

BELABOX details taken from belabox.net and the project's GitHub Sponsors page.

If you stream IRL, you have probably read that BELABOX Cloud costs $10 a month and wondered why anyone would pay more. The number is real, but it is a sponsorship tier, not a product on a shelf. That difference matters when you are choosing where to send your stream, so this page starts there — and then compares what each service actually does for you. BELABOX is an open-source project we respect, and your BELABOX encoder works with us unchanged.

Most of the confusion online comes from mixing these up. Only the third one is comparable to us.

BELABOX, the encoder. The open-source software that turns a small board into a bonding encoder you carry with you. We do not compete with it and we do not sell an alternative to it. It works with Enhanced IRL exactly as it works with anything else.
SRTLA, the bonding protocol. The open-source protocol that lets your encoder split one stream across several mobile connections. It came out of the BELABOX project, and it is the reason bonded IRL streaming is affordable at all. Enhanced IRL accepts SRTLA on every plan that includes a stream key.
BELABOX Cloud, the hosted service. The relay servers and the encoder remote control that the project hosts. This is the only piece this page compares with Enhanced IRL.

So when someone says "BELABOX or Enhanced IRL", the honest answer is usually "both": the encoder on one side, the servers on the other.

How you actually get BELABOX Cloud

BELABOX Cloud is not sold as an ordinary subscription. The login page states that the service is available to BELABOX sponsors on GitHub and to users with a voucher code from the BELABOX webshop. What you get depends on the tier you sponsor:

$5/month. One BELABOX cloud remote account, for controlling your encoder from a phone or a computer.
$10/month. One remote account plus one SRT + SRTLA relay server account, with access to servers in the USA, EU, UK, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Brazil and South Africa.
$20/month. Two remote accounts and two relay accounts.
Voucher. If you cannot use GitHub Sponsors, the BELABOX shop sells vouchers at the same $5, $10 and $20 monthly rates, for 1 to 12 months, redeemable on the cloud account.

This is worth understanding rather than complaining about. The money is a donation that keeps an open-source project alive, and the servers are a thank-you. It also means the relationship is not a commercial one: there is no company selling you a service level, and the person on the other end is maintaining the code the whole niche runs on.

Side-by-side comparison

	Enhanced IRL	BELABOX Cloud
What it is	A commercial service: stream keys (relay) and Cloud OBS	Hosted relay servers and encoder remote, offered to project sponsors
How you get it	Open signup, pick a plan, pay by card	GitHub sponsorship of the project, or a voucher from the BELABOX shop
Entry price for a relay	€5/month (Stream Key Lite), VAT included	$10/month sponsorship tier (relay + remote)
Ingest protocols	RTMP, SRT and SRTLA on every plan with a stream key	SRT and SRTLA
Server locations	Ingest in Europe, Asia and the US; Cloud OBS in Europe	USA, EU, UK, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, South Africa
Cloud OBS	Yes, from €29/month (720p60) up to €89/month (1080p60)	No — it is a relay, not a hosted OBS
Automatic scene switching	Built in on every Cloud OBS plan, with an Offline scene ready	Not part of the service (you run it yourself in your OBS)
Control your own OBS at home	Yes, with Stream Key (€9/month) and the Cloud OBS plans above Basic	No
Encoder remote control	No	Yes, BELABOX cloud remote for BELABOX encoders
Multistreaming	No, one destination	No, it relays your stream onward
Billing	Monthly in euros with VAT and an invoice, cancel anytime	Recurring donation in dollars via GitHub, or a prepaid voucher
Languages	Site, app and support in English, Spanish and French	English

BELABOX figures are the sponsorship tiers published on the verification date at the top of this page; check the project's GitHub Sponsors page before deciding, since tiers can change.

What Enhanced IRL adds

Cloud OBS. A relay forwards your video. A Cloud OBS runs OBS Studio on a GPU server for you: scenes, overlays, alerts, chat widgets, all composed off your phone and off your home PC. That is a different job, and it is the main reason to look at us at all. Plans from €29/month (720p60) to €89/month (1080p60).
Automatic scene switching, already configured. Every Cloud OBS plan watches your incoming bitrate and cuts to a preconfigured Offline scene when your connection dies, then comes back on its own. Nothing to install or tune.
You can just buy it. No GitHub account, no sponsorship, no voucher. Pick a plan, pay by card, cancel when you want.
European billing. Prices in euros with VAT included, and a proper invoice for each payment — which matters if you are declaring streaming income in the EU.
Three languages. Website, dashboard, documentation and support in English, Spanish and French.
RTMP as well as SRT and SRTLA. Useful if your phone app or your encoder does not do SRT, or if you want to test with something simple before going out.

When BELABOX Cloud is the better choice

There are cases where we would tell you to stay where you are, and this is one of them.

You only need a relay. If you already run OBS at home or on your own machine and all you want is a bonded SRTLA endpoint to send to, the $10 tier is very hard to beat on price, and it comes from the people who wrote the protocol.
You stream from a region we do not cover. We have ingest in Europe (Frankfurt), Asia (Singapore) and US East (New York). BELABOX Cloud has relays in eight regions. If you are streaming from Brazil, South Africa or Australia, that proximity is worth more than anything on our feature list.
You want the encoder remote. Controlling a BELABOX encoder from your phone is a BELABOX cloud feature. We do not have an equivalent.
You want to support the project. SRTLA exists because someone wrote it and keeps maintaining it. Sponsoring that work is a good reason on its own, and the servers are a perk on top. We would not argue with it.

Your BELABOX keeps working

Nothing about your encoder changes if you send to us. You keep the same box, the same modems, the same bonding. What changes is the address it publishes to: instead of your BELABOX Cloud relay, you enter the publish URL and stream key from your Enhanced IRL dashboard, using SRTLA exactly as you do now. Our documentation has the step-by-step for BELABOX, including what to put in each field.

If you are not sure which plan fits, the relay-only plans start at €5/month and the Cloud OBS plans at €29/month — see the full pricing.

Frequently asked questions

Does BELABOX Cloud cost $10 a month?

That figure is the GitHub sponsorship tier that includes a relay server account, along with a cloud remote account. It is not a product you buy in a checkout: the login page says access is for BELABOX sponsors on GitHub or for people with a voucher from the BELABOX shop, which sells the same $5, $10 and $20 monthly rates for 1 to 12 months.

Can I use my BELABOX encoder with Enhanced IRL?

Yes. Every Enhanced IRL plan with a stream key accepts SRTLA, so a BELABOX encoder connects the same way it connects anywhere else. You change the publish URL and the stream key in the encoder and nothing else.

Is Enhanced IRL a replacement for BELABOX?

No, and it is worth being precise: BELABOX is the encoder you carry, plus the SRTLA protocol it uses. We are the servers it sends to. The only overlap with the BELABOX project is BELABOX Cloud, its hosted relay.

What does Enhanced IRL do that a BELABOX Cloud relay does not?

It can run OBS for you. Cloud OBS gives you OBS Studio on a GPU server with your scenes, overlays and alerts, plus automatic scene switching to an Offline scene when your signal drops. A relay only forwards video; you still need something to compose it.

Should I cancel my BELABOX sponsorship if I sign up with you?

That is your call, but they are not the same purchase. The sponsorship funds the open-source project whose protocol we all use, including us. Plenty of people would reasonably keep both: the sponsorship for the project and the encoder remote, our plan for the relay and Cloud OBS.

Do you have servers outside Europe?

Yes, for ingest: on top of Europe (Frankfurt) we have relays in Asia (Singapore) and US East (New York). Cloud OBS, on the other hand, runs in Europe only. If you stream from a region we do not cover, a relay closer to you will behave better, and BELABOX Cloud lists relays in eight regions.

Keep your encoder, change where it sends

Stream keys with RTMP, SRT and SRTLA from €5/month. Cloud OBS from €29/month. No commitment.

See the plans