Go live from OBS to the browser in under a second with WHIP

From the Streaming CDN team. The original, kept up to date, is at streaming-cdn.ewin888.com/guides/obs-whip-webrtc-live-streaming.

WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol) lets an encoder publish over WebRTC with a single HTTP request. OBS Studio supports it natively, so a stream can go from OBS to viewers' browsers over WebRTC end to end, in the low hundreds of milliseconds, instead of the several seconds that segment-based delivery such as HLS adds.

1. The publish URL

OBS publishes to your ingest domain, a publish point and a stream name:

https://<ingest-hostname>/<publish-point>/<stream-name>

# example
https://push.example.com/live/camera-01

• The publish point defaults to /live; the value configured in the console is authoritative.
• The stream name is the last path segment and is case-sensitive. Streams published at the same time on one ingest domain need different names.
• Viewers watch through a playback domain bound to the ingest domain the stream was published to.

2. Before you publish

1. The ingest domain has active DNS and TLS.
2. If source IP allowlisting is on, add the publisher's public egress IP (a private LAN address is not enough).
3. If Stream Key authentication is on, create a key for this exact ingest domain. The secret is shown once.
4. Use a current OBS Studio release that includes WHIP.

3. OBS settings

Open Settings → Stream and enter:

OBS field	Value
Service	WHIP
Server	The full WHIP URL, including publish point and stream name
Bearer Token	The ingest domain's Stream Key (empty only when Stream Key authentication is off)

OBS sends the Bearer Token as Authorization: Bearer <stream-key>. Treat Stream Keys as passwords: never put them in public URLs, screenshots, repositories or shared OBS profiles.

4. Recommended output for low latency

Setting	Value	Why
Video encoder	H.264 (hardware or software)	Broad browser support
Rate control	CBR	Predictable bandwidth
720p bitrate	1.5–2.5 Mbps	Adjust for motion and source quality
1080p bitrate	3–6 Mbps	Adjust for motion and source quality
Keyframe interval	1 second	Faster first frame and recovery
H.264 profile	Main or Baseline	Avoids unsupported decoder features
B-frames	0	Lower latency
Audio	Enabled, not muted	WHIP negotiates the audio track

5. Check that it works

1. OBS changes from Connecting to Live.
2. The console's Live streams list shows the stream name with active tracks.
3. Open https://<playback-hostname>/<publish-point>/<stream-name> and check video and audio.

6. When it does not work

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
401 invalid_stream_key	Missing, expired, revoked or wrong-domain key	Create a key for the active ingest domain and paste it into Bearer Token
403 publisher_ip_denied	The publisher's public IP is not allowed	Add the real public egress IP, or turn the allowlist off while testing
429 Too Many Requests	A duplicate publisher, or a concurrency limit	Stop the old publisher or use a different stream name
OBS stays on Connecting	Firewall, outbound UDP/DTLS, DNS or TLS	Check DNS/TLS, allow outbound UDP, read the OBS log
Live with no picture	Hidden or muted source, incompatible output	Check the OBS preview and mixer; use H.264 and a one-second keyframe interval

Publishing from a web page instead

A browser page can publish too: WHIP with fetch() and a send-only RTCPeerConnection. Because that request is cross-origin, list the page's origin under the ingest domain's browser publishing origins (CORS) in the console. Encoders such as OBS never ask for CORS and are unaffected.

---

Streaming CDN delivers live video to browsers over WebRTC, with chat and votes on real-time data channels, adaptive quality, recording and playback protection. Learn more.