MPC-HC's biggest advantage is arguably just how lightweight it is. Not only is it small in terms of hard drive space, but its CPU and overall system resource use is incredibly small compared to other video players, VLC included.
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The Best Open Source VLC Media Player AlternativesTop Media & Audio Players like VLC Media Player
The best open source alternative to VLC Media Player is MPC-HC. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to VLC Media Player and loads of them is open source so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to VLC Media Player are MPV, SMPlayer, IINA and MPC-BE.
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VLC Media Player alternatives are mainly Media Players, but if you're looking for Audio Players or Image Viewers you can filter on that. Other popular filters include Linux, Android, Windows, Open Source, iPhone, Free and MS-DOS + Free. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to VLC Media Player.
Alternatives list
144 MPC-HC alternatives
119 MPV alternativesMPV is an MPlayer-based video player that is available on all major desktop operating systems. Linux users in particular cite MPV as one of the best alternatives to VLC. Its interface is extremely minimal, though with that comes extraordinary stability.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Android
- BSD
- Snapcraft
- Flathub
- F-Droid
- Haiku
- Xfce
- Chocolatey
129 SMPlayer alternativesLike MPV, SMPlayer is based off of MPlayer, but unlike MPV, it's more focused on accessibility with its user interface. Out of the box, users cite SMPlayer as having the versatility and stability of MPV with the ease of use of players like VLC. It also supports add-ons such as a YouTube search.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-2.0)
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- mpv
- Snapcraft
- PortableApps.com
- Haiku
- MPlayer
- Flathub
- Homebrew
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50 IINA alternativesThough it's exclusive to macOS, IINA's users swear by it for being lightweight, efficient, and performative. Minor annoyances such as performance-based audio-video-subtitle desyncs that can be found on VLC are not a problem when using IINA. Additionally, its interface is neat clean, with clearly labelled settings. This ease of use combined with its excellent performance makes it an easy recommendation for macOS users looking for a media player.
119 MPC-BE alternativesMPC-BE is another fork of Media Player Classic (specifically of the Home Cinema fork) with a focus on bug fixes and for automatically mounting ISO images. It is actively updated and performs really well for video playback. Users do not recommend it for music playback, as it lacks support for playlist looping and includes odd behaviors for shuffling media playback.
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132 Media Player Classic alternativesThough it's been discontinued and almost entirely superseded by successors like Media Player Classic Home Cinema, some users still swear by it as a sort of "old reliable" video player that can play most files people throw at it with no issue. However, it's been 10 years since its last release, so it's highly recommended to look at MPC-HC and other forks actively in development.
131 MPlayer alternativesMPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Alerts
- Discontinued
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- AmigaOS
- Xfce
- MorphOS
- Haiku
62 Celluloid alternativesCelluloid (formerly GNOME MPV) is a simple GTK+ frontend for mpv. Celluloid interacts with mpv via the client API exported by libmpv, allowing access to mpv's powerful playback capabilities.
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66 LLPlayer alternativesA media player to enhance your language skills with dual and AI-generated subtitles powered by OpenAI Whisper. Real-time OCR, translation with Google/DeepL, and word lookup boost learning. Supports 134 languages, fully customizable shortcuts, and it's free & open-source.
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Open source video player leveraging Qt/QML and libmpv, featuring dual subtitle support, customizable shortcuts, auto chapter skipping by keyword, YouTube and online video playback, integrated playlist overlay, dynamic navigation, and KDE ecosystem compatibility.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Application types
Platforms
- Windows
- Linux
- KDE Plasma
- mpv
- Snapcraft
- Flathub
- Flatpak
+1
42 Screenbox alternativesScreenbox is a modern video player that cares about performance and ease of use on a wide range of device types. It features a beautiful, friendly user interface while being fast and lightweight
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Very light-weight. With super easy interface and without any bugs.