Bunny Stream: How to Host and Deliver Videos Without Vimeo or YouTube

If you’re hosting video content on your website, whether that’s courses, tutorials, product demos, or marketing material, you’ve probably looked at YouTube and Vimeo as your two main options. YouTube is free but plasters ads over your content and doesn’t let you control who watches. Vimeo gives you control but charges a premium for it, especially once your library grows.

I ran into this exact problem with BitBuddies, where I host free courses on topics like Dokploy and CloudPanel setup. I needed a video platform that would let me embed clean, ad-free videos in my course pages without paying Vimeo’s subscription fees. Bunny Stream turned out to be the answer, and I’ve been running all my course videos through it since.

This guide walks through the full setup: creating a library, uploading videos, embedding the player, customizing it, and locking things down with security features. I’ll also cover the API if you want to automate uploads.

If you want a broader look at the Bunny.net platform beyond just video, check out my Bunny.net review where I cover CDN, storage, DNS, and all the other services.

Why not just use YouTube?

YouTube is free and the obvious choice for public videos. But it comes with tradeoffs that matter if you’re embedding videos on your own site:

• Ads on your content: Unless viewers pay for YouTube Premium, they see ads before or during your videos. On a course page, that means your students watch an ad for something unrelated before every lesson.
• Recommendations pull viewers away: YouTube’s sidebar and end-screen suggestions actively try to send your viewers somewhere else. You’re competing with cat videos for attention.
• No real access control: You can make videos unlisted, but anyone with the link can share it. There’s no token authentication or DRM.
• YouTube owns the relationship: Your viewers are YouTube’s users first, yours second. Analytics are limited, and you can’t customize the player to match your brand.
• SEO leakage: Embedded YouTube videos send authority to youtube.com, not your domain.

YouTube makes sense for public marketing content where you want maximum reach. But for course content, membership sites, or anything where you want to control the experience, it falls short.

Why not Vimeo?

Vimeo solves the ad and branding problems, but the pricing is where it gets painful:

Those prices are per-user, billed annually. And once you hit bandwidth limits, you either upgrade or your videos stop loading. For a course platform with a growing library, the costs scale in a way that doesn’t make much sense.

What Bunny Stream gives you instead

Bunny Stream is pay-as-you-go. No monthly subscription tiers, no per-video limits, no bandwidth caps. You pay for storage and delivery, that’s it.

Here’s what it includes at no extra cost:

For what I run on BitBuddies, my monthly Bunny Stream bill stays under $5. That’s for all the course videos stored and delivered. On Vimeo, the same setup would cost me $33/month at minimum, probably more.

Setting up Bunny Stream step by step

Here’s the full walkthrough from zero to embedded videos on your site.

1. Create a Bunny.net account

Head to bunny.net and sign up. No credit card needed for the 14-day trial. You’ll land on the dashboard after confirming your email.

2. Create a video library

In the Bunny dashboard, go to Stream in the left sidebar, then click Add Video Library.

You’ll need to pick:

• Library name: Something descriptive. I use “bitbuddies-courses” for my course content.
• Primary storage region: Pick the one closest to where most of your viewers are. For a global audience, Frankfurt or New York are solid defaults.
• Replication regions (optional): Add more regions if you want faster delivery worldwide. Each additional region adds $0.005/GB to storage costs, but delivery gets faster for viewers in those areas.

Hit create and your library is ready.

3. Upload your videos

You have three options for getting videos into Bunny Stream:

# Step 1: Create a video object
curl -X POST "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"title": "Lesson 1 - Getting Started"}'

# Step 2: Upload the video file via PUT
curl -X PUT "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos/{videoId}" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" \
  --data-binary @lesson-1.mp4

curl -X POST "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos/fetch" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/video.mp4", "title": "Lesson 1"}'

After upload, Bunny automatically transcodes each video into multiple resolutions. You can watch the progress in the dashboard. Transcoding time depends on video length and resolution, but a 10-minute 1080p video usually finishes in a couple of minutes.

4. Embed videos on your site

Once a video is transcoded, click on it in the dashboard and you’ll find the embed code. It looks like this:

<iframe
  src="https://iframe.mediadelivery.net/embed/{libraryId}/{videoId}"
  loading="lazy"
  style="border:none;position:absolute;top:0;height:100%;width:100%;"
  allow="accelerometer;gyroscope;autoplay;encrypted-media;picture-in-picture;"
  allowfullscreen="true"
></iframe>

Wrap it in a responsive container for proper sizing:

<div style="position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;">
  <iframe
    src="https://iframe.mediadelivery.net/embed/{libraryId}/{videoId}"
    loading="lazy"
    style="border:none;position:absolute;top:0;height:100%;width:100%;"
    allow="accelerometer;gyroscope;autoplay;encrypted-media;picture-in-picture;"
    allowfullscreen="true"
  ></iframe>
</div>

The padding-top: 56.25% gives you a 16:9 aspect ratio. Adjust for other ratios if needed.

On BitBuddies, each course lesson page has one of these embeds. The player loads fast, there are no ads, and students can pick their quality level. That’s exactly the experience I wanted.

5. Customize the player

Go to your video library settings to configure the player appearance:

• Player color: Match your brand. I use the BitBuddies accent color so the player feels native to the site.
• Controls: Show or hide specific buttons (speed control, quality selector, PiP, fullscreen).
• Captions: Upload SRT/VTT files for subtitles. Multiple languages supported.
• Thumbnail: Bunny auto-generates one, or you upload your own.
• Watermark: Overlay your logo on the video. Position, size, and opacity are all adjustable.
• Playback speed: Enable speed controls so viewers can watch at 1.5x or 2x (course students love this).

You can also skip the built-in player entirely and use the raw HLS manifest URL with your own player (Video.js, Plyr, whatever you prefer). The HLS URL is available in each video’s settings.

6. Set up security

This is where Bunny Stream earns its keep over YouTube for course content.

const crypto = require('crypto');

function signBunnyUrl(libraryId, videoId, tokenKey, expirationTime) {
  const expires = Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) + expirationTime;
  const hashableBase = tokenKey + videoId + expires;
  const token = crypto
    .createHash('sha256')
    .update(hashableBase)
    .digest('hex');
  return `https://iframe.mediadelivery.net/embed/${libraryId}/${videoId}?token=${token}&expires=${expires}`;
}

Working with the API

If you’re building a course platform or any app that manages video programmatically, the Bunny Stream API covers everything you need.

Common API operations

# List all videos in a library
curl "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos?page=1&itemsPerPage=100" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}"

# Get video details (including transcoding status)
curl "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos/{videoId}" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}"

# Update video metadata
curl -X POST "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos/{videoId}" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"title": "Updated Title", "chapters": [{"title": "Intro", "start": 0, "end": 60}]}'

# Delete a video
curl -X DELETE "https://video.bunnycdn.com/library/{libraryId}/videos/{videoId}" \
  -H "AccessKey: {your-api-key}"

Webhooks

Set up webhook URLs in your library settings to get notified when:

• A video finishes transcoding (video_encoded)
• A video gets a caption generated (caption_generated)

This is useful if you want to automatically publish a course lesson once its video is ready, or trigger a notification to students.

How much it actually costs

This is the part that sold me. Bunny Stream pricing breaks down into two components:

Real-world cost examples

My setup on BitBuddies

Here’s how I actually use Bunny Stream for BitBuddies in practice:

I have one video library called “bitbuddies-courses” with Frankfurt as the primary storage region and a second replication point in New York. Most of my students are in Europe and North America, so this covers the vast majority of viewers with low latency.

Each course (like the Dokploy Setup and CloudPanel Setup courses) has its own collection within the library. When I record a new lesson, I upload it through the dashboard, wait a few minutes for transcoding, and drop the embed code into the course page.

I’ve enabled token authentication so the video URLs expire after a few hours. The courses are free, so I’m not trying to lock things down aggressively, but it prevents people from hot-linking the videos elsewhere and racking up my bandwidth bill.

The player matches the BitBuddies brand colors, and I have playback speed controls enabled because students watching setup tutorials often want to skip through the parts they already know.

Total monthly cost for all of this: around $2. I spend more on coffee in a day.

When you should still use YouTube or Vimeo

Bunny Stream isn’t the right pick for every situation. Be honest about your use case:

Stick with YouTube when:

• You want maximum organic discoverability (search, recommendations, algorithm)
• Your content is public and you benefit from YouTube’s built-in audience
• You don’t mind ads on your videos
• You need free hosting with unlimited storage

Consider Vimeo when:

• You need OTT (over-the-top) live streaming with monetization
• Your workflow depends on Vimeo’s specific integrations (certain LMS platforms, marketing tools)
• You need Vimeo’s built-in video creation and editing tools

Use Bunny Stream when:

• You’re embedding videos on your own site and want a clean, branded experience
• You’re building a course platform, membership site, or knowledge base
• Cost predictability matters and you don’t want per-tier subscription pricing
• You need DRM, token auth, or hotlink protection
• You want API control over your video library

Frequently asked questions

Wrapping up

Bunny Stream fills a gap that YouTube and Vimeo leave open. YouTube is free but takes control away from you. Vimeo gives control back but charges a subscription that scales awkwardly. Bunny charges for what you actually use, includes features that cost extra elsewhere, and gets out of your way.

I’ve been running my BitBuddies course videos on it for a while now and I have no plans to switch. The setup took less than 30 minutes, the player looks clean on every device, and my monthly bill is pocket change.

If you want to learn more about the full Bunny.net platform (CDN, storage, DNS, security, and more), I wrote a detailed Bunny.net review that covers everything. And if you’re looking at storage options for your video files or other assets, check out my Bunny Storage vs S3 vs Backblaze comparison.