How Vivi compares

An honest side-by-side with the players people actually use. Where another player wins, the table says so.

✓ built in, or an add-on from the project's own directory (noted) · – not built in · ? not confirmed in the official docs · n/a not applicable or not measured. Third-party scripts and components add a lot to mpv, VLC and foobar2000; this table only counts what the projects ship or list themselves.

Feature	Vivi	mpv	VLC	MPC-HC	IINA	Celluloid	foobar2000
Music
Waveform progress bar	✓	–	–	?	?	–	✓ component
Karaoke / synced lyrics view	✓	–	–	?	?	–	✓ component
Auto-tagger (fingerprint / MusicBrainz)	✓	–	–	–	–	–	✓ MusicBrainz component
Free music catalogue (Jamendo, FMA, Archive)	✓	–	?	–	–	–	?
Music library	✓	–	✓	?	?	–	✓
Extending
Plugins / add-ons	✓	✓ Lua / JS scripts	✓ add-ons	?	✓	?	✓ components
In-app plugin marketplace	✓	–	?	–	?	–	?
MCP server for AI agents	✓	–	–	–	–	–	–
Customizable control bar	✓	?	✓ toolbar editor	?	✓	?	✓
Playback
Network streams / IPTV (M3U)	✓	✓	✓	?	?	?	radio
Online subtitle search	✓	–	✓ VLSub	?	✓	–	n/a
Subtitle sync / offset	✓	✓	✓	?	?	?	n/a
A-B loop	✓	✓	✓	?	?	?	?
Recording / stream dump	✓	✓	✓	?	?	?	n/a
Miniplayer / picture-in-picture	✓	–	?	?	✓	–	?
Video playback	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	–
Footprint (measured, see below)
Download (Linux)	14.8 MB tarball	n/a (distro)	n/a (distro)	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Installed size (own files)	35.7 MB	6.5 MB	19.8 MB	n/a	n/a	?	n/a
Time to first window	~1.0 s	~0.27 s	~0.15 s	n/a	n/a	?	n/a
Idle RAM (RSS)	~216 MB	~202 MB	~106 MB	n/a	n/a	?	n/a
Project
Open source	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	–
License	MIT	GPL-2.0+ (LGPL build option)	GPL-2.0 (libVLC LGPL)	GPL-3.0	GPL-3.0	GPL-3.0	freeware
Platforms	Linux, Windows, macOS	Linux, Windows, macOS, BSD	Windows, macOS, Linux, mobile	Windows	macOS	Linux	Windows, macOS, mobile
UI toolkit	Slint	none (on-screen controller)	Qt	Win32 (MFC)	native macOS (Swift)	GTK	Default UI / Columns UI
Engine	libmpv	mpv	libVLC	DirectShow / LAV	libmpv	libmpv	own

Where the others win

mpv

Smaller and faster to start than Vivi in our measurement, with a huge collection of user scripts and the most configurable video output. Vivi itself is built on libmpv.

VLC

Lowest memory and fastest start in our test, runs on nearly every platform including mobile, and plays discs and devices that Vivi does not target.

foobar2000

Long audio-focused polish: gapless playback, ReplayGain, CD ripping, transcoding, DSP effects and a large component ecosystem. Not open source, and no video.

IINA

A truly native macOS app with trackpad gestures, Picture in Picture and Live Text. Vivi's macOS build is unsigned and best effort.

MPC-HC

A mature Windows classic built on the DirectShow / LAV filter ecosystem.

Celluloid

Fits right into GNOME with GTK, MPRIS and Wayland support, and reads your existing mpv config files as-is.

How we measured

Size, start time and memory were measured by us on one machine under identical conditions on 17 Oct 2026. Numbers appear only where we measured them.

Download: size of vivi-v0.11.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz on the GitHub release (14,816,584 bytes). mpv and VLC on Linux come from distribution packages, so there is no single download to compare.
Installed size: Vivi = the files the installer copies (vivi, vivi-mcp, desktop file and icons), excluding the system libmpv. mpv and VLC = the Installed-Size of their Debian 13 packages (mpv + libmpv2; vlc, vlc-bin, vlc-plugin-base, vlc-plugin-qt, libvlc5, libvlccore9), excluding shared libraries such as FFmpeg and Qt.
Time to first window and idle RAM: Debian 13 x86_64, Xvfb virtual display with software OpenGL (no GPU), a fresh empty home directory per run, nothing opened, warm disk cache. Time runs from launch until the first visible window appears (polled every 20 ms); RSS is read from /proc 8 s later. Median of 5 runs. Vivi 0.11.1 release binary, mpv 0.40.0 (--idle --force-window --no-config), VLC 3.0.24 (Qt interface). Software rendering inflates memory for OpenGL apps, so expect different absolute numbers on a desktop with a GPU.
MPC-HC, IINA and foobar2000 do not run natively on Linux and Celluloid was not tested, so no numbers are shown for them.

Sources

Competitor facts come from the projects' own sites and documentation, checked 17 Oct 2026. Something wrong or out of date? Open an issue.

Vivi: docs/features.md, v0.11.1 release
mpv: mpv.io, manual (ab-loop-a/b, --stream-record, sub-delay, ytdl), Copyright (GPLv2+, LGPLv2.1+ when built with -Dgpl=false)
VLC: videolan.org/vlc, features, legal (GPL v2 / LGPL), addons.videolan.org; VLC 3.0 source: Qt interface with Record and A→B Loop buttons (controller.hpp), Toolbars Editor (toolbar.cpp), bundled OpenSubtitles extension (VLSub.lua)
MPC-HC: github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc (GPL-3.0 license file; MFC per stdafx.h)
IINA: iina.io (plugins, customizable controls, Picture in Picture), github.com/iina/iina (GPL-3.0, Swift, based on mpv)
Celluloid: celluloid-player.github.io (GTK frontend for mpv), GitHub (GPL-3.0)
foobar2000: foobar2000.org, components (Waveform Seek Bar, OpenLyrics / Lyric Show Panel 3, MusicBrainz Tagger)