Free Yodeck Alternative for Digital Signage

Anthias is a free, self-hosted alternative to Yodeck. They take opposite approaches: Yodeck is a cloud platform priced per screen, and Anthias is open-source software that runs entirely on hardware you own, whether that is a Raspberry Pi, an x86 mini PC or an ARM single-board computer.

Neither is universally better, so here is a straight comparison rather than a sales pitch.

Anthias vs Yodeck at a glance

Yodeck figures are its published list prices as of August 2026: a free plan covering a single screen with Basic features, then $8 per screen per month, rising to $12 and $16 for Premium and Enterprise. Prices change, so check Yodeck’s own pricing page for current numbers.

What it costs over a year

Yodeck’s first screen is free, so the two only diverge as you add displays. Crediting that free screen and using the Basic list price:

Anthias has no software cost at any number of screens. What it does have is labor: every screen is a device you set up and maintain, so the cost moves off the invoice and into your own time.

Choose Anthias if

• You want zero recurring cost, permanently.
• You do not want your signage depending on someone else’s cloud, or network policy keeps your content on site.
• You want the screen to keep playing through an internet outage.
• You want open source software you can read, change, and keep running with no vendor risk.
• You show YouTube content. Paste a link and Anthias downloads the video to play locally, so the screen never buffers and never shows ads or recommended videos.
• You would rather own the hardware than rent access to it.

Moving your content across

You do not have to rebuild your library by hand. Anthias ships a built-in import wizard for Yodeck, so switching is mostly a matter of pasting a token.

1. In Yodeck, create an API token under Account Settings, then Advanced Settings, then API Tokens.
2. In Anthias, open Settings and choose Import from Yodeck under Import content.
3. Paste the token. Anthias validates it and lists the media it finds.
4. Review the list, adjust the selection if you want, and click import. You get per-item progress, and anything that fails can be retried without repeating what already worked.

Your images, videos and web pages are copied onto the player and added to the schedule. Existing Anthias assets are left alone, and running the import again skips whatever came over the first time, so it is safe to repeat. Your Yodeck credentials are used only to talk to the API during the import and are not stored on the device. There is a command-line equivalent with a --dry-run option if you would rather preview first.

Two things will not come across, and it is better to know now: audio and documents such as PDF and PowerPoint, which Anthias does not play, and Yodeck’s apps and widgets. Those render inside Yodeck, so their internal URLs would only produce broken assets here. The wizard lists anything it skips along with the reason rather than importing it half-way. Full detail is in the import documentation .

Updates, and the operating system underneath

Anthias updates over the air atomically. It runs on balenaOS, which keeps two system partitions: a new version is written to the spare one and the device switches over only once the whole image is in place, rolling back on its own if anything goes wrong. The base operating system moves forward this way too, so a screen stays current without a site visit and without a half-applied update leaving it dark.

That last point is worth dwelling on, because it shows up in the operating system a device actually runs. A platform that cannot push a full-image update over the air tends to leave hardware on whatever it first shipped with. The Yodeck image for Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4, the current download at the time of writing, is built on Raspbian 10 “buster”, which reached end of life in June 2024 . We will leave you to draw your own conclusion about a signage device that ships today on a base OS past its support window.

Try it on spare hardware

Anthias needs no account and no card, so you can put it on a spare Raspberry Pi, mini PC or single-board computer and judge it against your current setup in a few minutes. See Get Started , or read more on free digital signage software and Raspberry Pi digital signage .

Frequently asked questions

Is Anthias a free alternative to Yodeck?

Yes, with one clarification: Yodeck is also free for a single screen. If you only ever need one display, cost is not the deciding factor and you should choose on architecture instead, cloud-managed or self-hosted. The cost gap opens up from the second screen onward.

Can I move my content from Yodeck to Anthias?

Yes, and you do not have to do it by hand. Anthias has a built-in import wizard for Yodeck: paste a Yodeck API token, review the media it finds, and click import. Your images, videos and web pages are copied onto the player and added to the schedule. See importing content from other platforms .

Does Anthias have Yodeck’s apps and templates?

Not built in. Anthias plays images, videos and web pages, so anything you can build or host as a web page will display. There is also a library of free signage apps covering weather, clocks, news and countdown timers, each of which you add by pasting in a URL.

How does Anthias handle several screens?

Content is managed per device, each with its own dashboard. Two features keep that from becoming repetitive work: a whole fleet can be deployed and updated over the air through Balena , and the backup file lets you configure one device and restore that setup onto the rest.

What Anthias does not offer is a single dashboard where you change tomorrow’s playlist for every screen at once. If that specific workflow is what you need, a cloud platform priced per screen is the trade on offer.