PeerTube video no ads

The first beta of PeerTube was released in March 2018[12] and the first stable version in October 2018. In June 2018, only a few months after the first beta, 113 instances[13] are publicly available on the web that together host more than 10,000 videos.[14][15]

In June 2018, as a result of its videos disappearing amid changes regarding the monetization of YouTube channels, the Blender Foundation began experimenting with hosting a PeerTube instance to distribute copies of the foundation's videos.[16]

In May 2020, Framasoft published a roadmap of the software for the latter half of the year and created a fundraising campaign requiring €60,000 for aiding the development.[17] Five months later (in October 2020), PeerTube announced that they reached their fundraising goal of €60,000 after a €10,000 donation from Debian.[18][19] Throughout the latter half of 2020, PeerTube has added features such as global search, improved playlists, and more moderation tools.

End 2020, the meta-search engine Sepia Search was launched by Framasoft, allowing a global search on all PeerTube instances at once. To date (2021) Sepia Search totalises close to 800 individual instances.

In January 2021, Framasoft announced the release of PeerTube v3.0 with the help of a successful fundraising campaign.[20] The release highlighted peer-to-peer live streaming as the major feature of the release.

In April, the 28th of 2022, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) launched the official ActivityPub video platform EU Video of the EU institutions, bodies, and agencies (EUIs), based on PeerTube.[21]

Technology
Video introducing PeerTube
PeerTube uses WebTorrent technology. Each server hosts a torrent tracker and each web browser viewing a video also shares it. This allows to sharing of the load between the server itself and the clients as well as the bandwidth used through P2P technology.

The system works via a federation of instances run by independent entities. Each PeerTube server can host any number of videos by itself, and can additionally federate with other servers to let users watch their videos in the same user interface. This federation permits collectively hosting a large number of videos in a unified platform, without having to build an infrastructure comparable to that of the web giants. Each server is operated by and stays under the sole administration of a distinct entity.

PeerTube uses the ActivityPub protocol to allow decentralization and compatibility with other fediverse services, which can prevent vendor lock-in and make it more resilient against censorship.[16][22]

The software relies on the PostgreSQL DBMS