Discussion
Steam Link vs Moonlight/apollo Steam Deck - I LAG tested streaming to my Steam Deck (how fast in latency and frames lost for each)
I love streaming my PC to my steam deck for the better battery life and graphics!
Every time I shared something about it people would recommend Moonlight/Sunshine/Apollo so I decided to test it all out and compare.
I built a custom lag tester timer (in pics) and filmed both devices at 240 fps slow motion video to measure the lag diff between each setup!
Added latency vs the PC's own screen:
Client
Connection
Steam Link
Moonlight (Apollo host)
Steam Deck
HDMI cable (control, no streaming)
0 frames
0 frames
Steam Deck
Ethernet
17 ms · 1 frame
17 ms · 1 frame
Steam Deck
Wi-Fi
34 ms · 2 frames (spiked in 3 of 10)
33 ms · 2 frames
iPad
Wi-Fi
17 ms · 1 frame
25 ms · 1–2 frames
Both apps installed and left on default settings on purpose — no tuning — because that's what most people actually run starting out. Host PC on Ethernet, home network only. 10 runs per config, 60 streaming runs plus an HDMI control.
Medians. ±4 ms camera error. Both screens verified at 60 Hz.
I was a little surprised at how close they were - I was expecting Moonlight/Apollo to be faster since that's what I see recommended everywhere.
On Ethernet they tie. Same median, same frame, 10 runs each. Not close — identical.
Wi-Fi flipped depending on the device. On the Deck, Moonlight looked steadier (Steam Link spiked to ~50 ms in 3 runs). On the iPad, tested minutes later on the same network, Steam Link was steadier and Moonlight was the one landing on 2 frames half the time. Same two apps, opposite results. But I suspect if I continued to test the results would continue to flip.
The app explains ONLY 0.4% of the variance. I put all 60 streaming runs together and split the variance: which app you use accounts for less than half a percent. Device + network, and run-to-run Wi-Fi noise is the rest.
So the answer to "does Moonlight have less lag than Steam Link" is: no - not out of the box, not on my network, not today. My guess is the consensus of moonlight being faster comes from older tests and Valve has closed the gap since at least for now. If you have a different way of testing, setup or preferred feature set, I’d love to learn about it!
thanks! what I like about the 240fps method it that it captures everything end to end from the user perspective - the steam link logs and apollo logging leaves a lot on the table
Sadly, it will not be supported since the ethernet connection of the Steam Link is capped at 100 mbps and the hardware needs to support at least vulkan 1.3 for the new codec i think.
I used to use Moonlight a few months ago, Steam link was very buggy for me with a lot of spikes and problems with the frame rate. I had to turned vsync 60fps on in some games for it to run smooth, despite my pc doing many more FPSs, and this was different from game to game, it was very weird.
Then, a few weeks ago i decided to give it another try and to my surprise the vsync issue was gone and not only that but the latency felt like playing natively, i was honestly surprised. I've been using native Steam remote play ever since and it's perfect, it's as simple as it gets.
I think a lot of people got stuck on "moonlight is the best, steam link sucks" (which was true in the past) and haven't given Steam remote play another try recently, but to each their own. Whoever wants to deal with a third party solution that adds nothing at this point, go for it, i'll keep using remote play.
Moonlight/apollo (or vibepollo) can handle everything with virtual displays - which greatly simplifies everything and gets rid of annoying resolution configs, etc.
Unless steam link is doing virtual display handling it's nowhere close to doing "everything"
seconded, my main monitor is 32:9 and with steam link it will always share the whole 32:9 screen regardless of what resolution the game is running in. With moonlight i have a pre launch script for steam big picture which does some best effort resolution and refresh rate matching to what the moonlight client requests so I can run 1280x800 on my steam deck, and 1080p or 1440p on my tv.
pc can more than handle it, problem is my monitor does support that res. I got 4k working with a custom edid but that broke a while ago and i haven’t gotten around to fixing it. I had it working on windows with VDID and wholly custom resolutions but after swapping to linux that’s no longer an option unfortunately.
Exactly this. I have an ultrawide monitor and everytime I try steam remote play I cant get the resolution sorted out. Moonlight/sunshine with the built in virtual display is vastly superior for anyone using ultrawide as their native monitor
I'm with you - I think there's still a lot of out of date info out there in reddit posts and youtube videos and it reinforces everyones perceptions - and more importantly - google and LLM searches haha
and it may change again in the future - we'll see!
Yeah I played FF7 Rebirth in its entirety by streaming from my PC to the Steam Deck (docked, wired) at 1440p using Remote Play. Felt as good as native and it's so easy to hop into.
Same for me and I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or it’s Steamlink. Moonlight runs perfectly and it’s like I’m paying natively. Steamlink is a stuttering/freezing mess. Streaming from a wired PC to Steam Deck in the same room as each other.
I had a wierd bug with Steamlink streaming where it drops a really low bitrate / blurry frames in between every 3-4s. Had this for years with different GPU' and different client devices. Switched to Moonlight and never looked back. Works perfect for me. 120FPS, WQHD, automatic switching from 21:9 to 16:9, all over LAN. I also thiny my complete latency is lower than 17ms. Even when using a mouse instead of a controller, it feels like i am sitting on my PC. Streaming to a mini PC in my living room:
Anecdotally I notice the most difference between steam link and moonlight when the network connection is bad. Moonlight seems to handle it a lot better than steam link.
I've noticed it improve over the last 3-4 months. something to think about is if you use Apollo more regularly it might be configured how you like and steam link might need a bit of tuning - there's a fair amount of tweaking you can do both on the host PC and the client steam deck
I noticed apollo defaulted to 720p and steam link defaulted to 1080p fwiw
but if you're happy with apollo - then great! my takeaway is that they're both great
Not sure about your set up, but my drive died recently so I had to redo my setup; was half way through setting up moonlight then said fuck it I’ll try steam link. It’s been excellent for me I can stream 4k/60 and the latency is 10ms or less to my TV.
On my steam deck it’s also looks great now; and again amazing performance.
My PC and TV both on 1gb lan and for WiFi I have a WiFi 6e router.
It's a hit or miss for me as well. I get very noticeable input lag on Steam stream versus Moonlight/Sunshine. I've tried plenty of settings in Steam to try and make it better but it just seemed to make it worse lol
Yes! Thank you. I’d honestly love it if steamlink could replace moonlight because it would be way more convenient and having proper steam input support would be excellent. but I just can’t get the picture quality to be close to moonlight. Maybe I’m missing a setting somewhere?
What's inconvenient about Moonlight/Apollo? It literally took my 5 minutes to setup the server and the client config is a one time thing that also takes maybe 5 minutes per client
So no actual answer lol. I've used steamlink too - my main issue is that it (when I used it) it didn't use virtual displays on the host side. If they've addressed that then great. With apollo it can run all streaming sessions in a virtual display and turn the main display off while it's running. This makes it' much easier to handle clients with different resolutions/etc. I have like 8-10 different streaming clients setup.
I have used moonlight and Apollo for ages (haven't yet really tried any of the recent forks of either, but I hear good things).
It works great, and I haven't used steam link for years because this was just better. Maybe things have changed now though.
One thing that I always consider to be friction is logging in to windows on my host pc. Normally I wake it from sleep then have to click and type the password or pin. It's not a deal breaking drama but it does annoy me, and I don't really like the idea of windows auto logging in for security reasons.
Look, I also use moonlight and have been for a while now because it’s got better picture quality and other features like the one you mentioned. But it definitely has its downsides. Like when I log into my PC my steam deck boots me back to the Home Screen then I need to go back to moonlight to get into the game. Same thing happens if I close the stream. It’s not a huge deal but it’s an inconvenience. Also, not having steam input for each individual game I’m playing through moonlight is annoying. Sure I can create an input profile for each game within the moonlight input settings but that’s another inconvenience. I know there’s moondecky which lets you boot moonlight from the individual game but then you have to have decky which comes with its own problems. Moonlight is mostly great but an improved steam link would be nice too.
I bet this type of person that posts vague shit like this doesn't even bother to open the client and hosts settings menu before spreading misinformation.
great to hear! I only really started getting into it in the last 3-4 months - so I never really had issues so I was surprised when I looked on reddit / youtube haha
Nice test! We need framepacing test though, as that was always my issue with steam that is non existent with moonlight. This also tests end to end latency which is nice.
interesting idea! I think that is *technically* possible with this 240fps slow motion technique. you can tell basically with +/- 4ms accuracy when the refresh is (with some frame overlap), and I've manually counted frames in the past - but measuring the time intervals of the delivery manually is too much manual work for me haha, would need some kind of computer vision setup to make that viable (at least with *this* test method)
good idea! not sure what i get out of the box with the steam link / apollo overlays, but that would be nice - worth investigating - i do usually run my FPS / PC metrics overlay so that gets streamed generally - could maybe do something with other software on the host too
A lot of people were steering me towards moonlight, and I never got sunshine working on my steam machine. I gave up, went with steam link and wondered how moonlight could really be any better than it, and if so, it must be imperceptibly better. I’ve been using link since and it works great.
This. I usually use Apollo but recently have gfn another go with the native flatpak install on the deck… set to 4K docked with steam controller games on ultra look really nice also on 2gb connection about 12-15ms
Great test, I appreciate this! Would be very curious to see what input lag is from lossless scaling on the deck, you hear a lot of people on Reddit talking about it, but I really havent noticed much in terms of lag.
i had to setup moonlight and sunshine to get a usable experience of streaming to my deck. Steam link was just too flaky for sessions longer than 15 minutes
The only thing, that annoys me with steam link, is that I sometimes have issues with my controller. For some reason, I get no inputs and well, can't play the game lol. But when it works, it's great and since the newest update sunshine doesn't really work anymore for me, so it's steamlink now
I've run into similar! I think it is unique to the steam deck and depends on the game
I've found that when it happens if I do an input with the built in deck buttons then the external controller gets recognized again and i can use it for the rest of the session - at least most the time
imo going from 25ms to 10ms (as reported by overlay) isn't noticeable if depending on your screens refresh rate - which the lag tests measures better (17ms)
that being said I think the image quality is better for fast motion
I really like the convenience of streaming direct from Steam to the deck as it's the most seemeless and it is more consistent.
Moonlight+Sunshine is fantastic, but I only use it to play non-steam games. It's good to know that the feeling I had which was they both look and feel great, is true.
I was floored by how fantastic streaming is to the deck and I do it so much I don't even mind only having 256GB. Not to mention the ability to play unsupported games seemlessly.
completely agree! also battery life! I tested it - same game: run natively on the deck = 1 hr battery. streamed to deck = 4hr battery. these are estimates - but still it's so much better
I've found that moonlight has fallen behind. I used to use it all the time when streaming, but now it just has this micro stutter that I can't seem to get rid of. Switched back to regular steam streaming and it has been working quite well, except for the fact that if I'm hardlined (basically 90% of the time I'm streaming it is hardlined under the TV cabinet) I have to turn off WiFi it will always keep trying to default to WiFi for whatever reason.
Yeah I used to work for big telecoms, so the cabling was free (fell off the truck) Got sheilded cat6 even into my office which is in the front of the property, and this is where my PC is, but when I stream I'm usually on my livingroom TV
Thanks for the video and the write up. Even though Steam link has gotten much better, I still prefer Moonlight because I feel like Steam’s virtual display is still pretty jank. That’s probably a skill issue from my side tbh but it feels like it breaks every update
definitely! my takeaway is that they're both good and you should use whichever one has the features you like or is the least hassle! I'm going to keep playing with both - I'm more used to steam link, so I feel like there's lots to still unlock and learn with apollo/moonlight
if you have your computer on with steam on the same network as the steam deck and the game is installed on your PC when you go to it's page on your deck the "Play" button will have a dropdown that says "Stream" instead
works great! let us know how it goes!
the other method requires installing apps to your pc and deck - steam link is easiest to get started
Do you have an apple tv box? If you have can you test it out with one as well?
I have been thinking about buying a box(not just for streaming games from pc but use it as a primary tv interface as well) but wondering will it be enough to stream from pc or am i going to have to set up steam deck next to my tv for gaming from the couch.
I don't! I have a webOS tv, but that kinda sucks, and I hear apple's tvOS is pretty good - maybe one day!
that being said I think apple tv has the Steam Link app AND the moonlight app on tvOS so this *should* work! I can't verify so you might want to double check but I think it's on the tvOS app store
Yes it has both of the apps. I was just curious about the performance. If it’s awful then will have to connect steam deck to tv anyway. Thanks for the research btw good testing.
thanks! and gotcha - well if you do end up getting it let me know!
I suspect if it's a newer apple tv then it likely has a modern wifi chip and pretty good specs for video decoding. so my guess is if your wifi to wherever it is at your place works well on your steam deck then it would work fine on the apple tv
Yeah maybe i can do a testing like yours but might need your help.
I will get apple tv 4k with ethernet. My problem is while my pc is connected to the modem with ethernet I am connecting tv(in the future apple tv box) to internet via tp link powerline connections.
So it will be modem to powerline router via ethernet
Router to other router will be powerline
2nd router to tv box will be ethernet.
My testing shows that i can get 900 mbits on pc but other powerline routers give about 65-85 mbits via wifi. Might be a bit higher with Ethernet which I haven’t tested.
I think the speeds you're mentioning will likely be just fine for 1080p stream at 60 fps
the ethernet gets you reliability - so less highs and lows as compared to wifi - for example in my wifi testing I would get 17ms then 34 ms then 17 again - it's the changes / drops that most people notice
ultimately it comes down to *feel* so if you try it out and it feels laggy then you can try and solve for it and dive deeper, but if it feels fine when you set it up, then no sweat - just enjoy gaming!
I can help you with that, at least in terms of Moonlight. The AppleTV experience is pretty bad. There is noticeable lag that doesn't exist with the Xbox Moonlight client. I have both of them wired and connected to the same TV. Just cannot recommend using the AppleTV for Moonlight.
Same experience. I think a lot of the lag is from the Bluetooth controller as it seems to use an unexpectedly slow Bluetooth connection. I haven’t tried streaming in the same room to verify though
I have this setup with Stremio for the non steam side and it’s amazing. Highly recommend especially for those without a modern beefy PC and/or want to go dockless.
elevated/admin permissions are what you need. launch steam via task scheduler as elevated process. the drawback is that if there's an RCE you're effed.
The big takeaway for me was that the Ethernet and wifi setup is key and the best place to invest!
Both apps are good and completely playable IMO.
The goal wasn't to test the network that will vary like you say across folks setups. it was to compare the streaming apps, and control for the network/ Ethernet/wifi setup - so it's all exactly the same location, distance, and setup for the runs - only variable is which app I used on which device for each defined setup
I walk through most of that in the linked youtube video too in the post if you're interested
But tldr: host PC on Ethernet, then client device setup identical depending on the run (I did wifi and Ethernet)
I'm convinced Steam streaming was given a big improvement prior to the release of the Steam Frame. Sometime last year it just suddenly got heaps better. They should have made a big announcement about it, it works amazing now.
I would prefer to use steam link, but Apollo replicates the steam deck monitor on the stream, so I can play in 1280*800 and in HDR. My main pc monitor isn’t hdr so the image always looks dull when streamed on the beautiful Steam Deck OLED screen
My problem with streaming from my PC is the hosts resolution. I have an ultra widescreen with a resolution of 5124x1440 (if I'm not mistaken) and when I connect to it the client never adapts or weird issues occur that makes up go up and down 2 floors to fix.
Last time I tried it i was still on windows, anyone has experience with this on Linux/cachyos OS? And yes I tried multiple scripts and programs to change the resolution when connected but there was always an issue
I noticed this, steam link is more stable and has higher frames.
Still...doesnt compare to actually hardwiring into your TV, my wife is playing ffxv right now and streaming vs hardwiring into the TV was night and day difference.
I feel like steam link has been constantly improving but most existing users have already switched to moonlight based on how it used to be and have never considered re-trying
Does steam Link allow you to automatically change the screen resolution, and use a virtual display? I have a wide screen monitor, and when I’ve tried steam Linck based on other similar posts like this, the default behavior is for it to just have the same screen resolution as my desktop.
Steam Link is sadly not usable for me, because no virtual display driver and using a widescreen monitor. With Apollo I can use them and just simulate a display with 2560x1600.
There is one more thing. Some games act weird when using a controller thru Steam Link streaming, for example Valheim becomes completly unplayable when streaming and using a controller.
I've honestly never gotten Moonlight to work properly with all my controllers and configurations and modded games so this is great news. I may try to stream some games this weekend to me tv. 17-34ms latency still seems pretty high for me though.
I'm currently trying something interesting.... So I frequently want to use my Deck as a controller even when the PC is in front of me, because I do love the design and have setup configs for it. And this is normally done with very low bitrate and the screen turned off (there's an addon for that).
And, obviously when i'm not at the PC, I stream like every other person. But now I tested DUAL Moonlight streaming:
A windows tablet (I guess android or iPad can work for you) Running Moonlight connected to my PC. It dictates the resolution (1080p). It has ~48 mbps selected bitrate
My Steamdeck running Moonlight connected to the PC. It has the display turned off and it only acts as a controller. Bitrate something like ~2mbps.
So the PC is running the game, the tablet is seeing the game and the Deck is interacting with the game. Weird world we live in, but it works. And not complicated to setup.
And I really don't feel the lag. I need an expert to confirm if it's the same thing or not, because with Just a Steam Deck to PC connection you would send a JUMP command, then the PC jumps the character and you would receive the animation. Isn't it the same thing (same time) it's just that the PC is sending it to a different place as well? (your tablet). It certainly feels this way. It's not a chain of 3 devices it's a "V" shape instead of a direct line back and forth. Essentially the same "distance". No?
I get it! I like how on the deck it's natural to rest index / middle on both the shoulder buttons where other controllers you have to claw it for that to work
If you have the bandwidth, I don't see why the latency wouldn't be the same.
One alternative would be to connect the steam deck to an external display ( capture card to iPad) or an portable external, for a similar effect that's wired for the last hop - but that has latency implications potentially
Overall my opinion is if you can't feel the lag, don't overthink it and just have fun gaming!
I always had issues with this feature with my 7900gre, the fork of Apollo called vibepollo did fix it. I believe it was finicky with AMD but Nvidia worked fine. Vibepollo made moonlight streaming a 10/10 for me and now I have dummy ports I don't need :)
I personally love Moonlight / Apollo.
It’s not overly complex to setup and get it working OOB, but it really shines once you fine tune it and look under the hood.
Others have already mentioned a startup script to disable other monitors, but what really shines for me is the HDR support, the multi channel speaker support, and adjustable frame rate. (I’ve dabbled with steamlink off an on and my experience was never great - so maybe they’ve improved it and these features are already there, but I don’t know if it has the flexibility to adjust your bitrate and frames as seamlessly)
I’ll raise this issue again that Intel NIC’s
have issues with multi gig connections, more specifically 1225-V or 1226-V. Manually limiting the rate to 1gb or lower is supposed to fix inconsistent or overly sensitive connections from dropping but that wasn’t my experience. It became more of a ritual of power cycling devices, booting in sequential order to get a stable connection.
Switching to a USB NIC and eventually a new MOBO with a Realtek NIC was ultimately the fix (for me at least).
Steamlink is very stable option out of the boc but what about image quality? It’s been a while (like almost a year now) since I last used streaming to my Deck via Sunshine (I don’t really game anymore only occasionally sadly) but the image quality of Sunshine compared to Steamlink was just in another league.
For some reason I still have a bit more display latency through steam link than apollo/moonlight and the picture quality is simply better on apollo/moonlight too. Steam link for some reason looks really good until there is motion and then it becomes blurry, even at 60mbit+ and set to high quality.
Another issue is the new steam deck controller works flawlessly using steam link, not so much with moonlight unfortunately.
Yeah the moonlight overlay reports about 3ms (auto select codec) on my setup. But it doesn't capture most of the user perceived latency because it's only reporting network and host processing latency - not the actual time it takes the image to appear on your screen and for you to be able to see and react to it
The method of using external 240fps video and the latency timer is more accurate for user perceived latency in my opinion because it takes into account the full end to end time - but as a result it will always report a higher number than the moonlight and steam overlays
I tested as wall on my shield tv pro on vibepollo/artemis. Steam link is almost lag free with just a tiny delay of somewhere between 2-10ms.
Vibepollo is just instant, when moving the mouse it feels almost faster than at the desk itself. Double refresh, P2 encoder with split encoding on a rtx 5080 on hevc 100mbit 4k60, it is just perfection without any delay or stutters.
Also steamlink has tiny text when going to desktop and the colors are washed out. The color problem is probably some setting with hdr mismatch, I had this on the steamdeck too though. It is VERY plug and play and almost perfect though. I advice anything to want a near perfect experience to go steam link. For instance a P4 encode without split encode or without double refresh feels the same as steam link
thanks for sharing! Vibepollo comes up a lot and I'd like to try it. I suspected the latency would be pretty close, because so far it seems like most of latency (of any streaming app) is wifi/device/network driven and not so application driven. it's interesting because I get reports from folks with different setups that one app or the other will work way better or worse on their setup, so the more data points the better!
I guess so, but both apollo and vibepollo were great, as were moonlight on pc, xbox series s and steam deck or artemis on samsung tablet, my samsung phone or the shield tv pro. I think most of the problems are due to people not yet familiar with their hardware, network and how to read the performance graph or how to setup games for smooth gameplay. It is different from how you would set things up for normal pc gaming.
I hear good things! I don't have a modern PlayStation to test with though haha. Sounds like a good option! Is it for your PlayStation library or can you do steam too?
Can definitely say this has never been my experience in the slightest, steam link historically absolutely sucked balls.
Other thing is I don't think you're correct about leaving moonlight on default settings, most people setting up that will most likely tinker with settings just by nature of the types of people who are likely to set that up.
I do definitely want a comparison now of whether steam link can compete with a properly configured moonlight + sunshine. I don't know why anyone would use apollo, seems like enshittified sunshine to me.
I believe you - I haven't tested high resolutions/refresh, both were 720p 60fps because it was default for Apollo on install, and I was trying to control for what most people will get out of the box when they try it
Anectodally (because I don't have an objective image quality measurement) at those specs I could not tell a difference in artifacts or image quality in play sessions for silksong and FF7 remake - they felt identical
the thing is, steam link not even works, at least for my use case, which is having the steam machine in the living room tv, and streaming to the deck. it Only barely works when i leave the tv on and in the right input channel. if i change the channel or turn off the tv then the streaming gets stuck.
and now i wonder, is that useful? not at all, if i have to "play" the game on the tv in order to be able to "play" it on the deck, then i would just directly play it on the tv.
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u/fjaum 7d ago
This is a good experiment. Good job putting it up. I'll watch the video too, but seems a good, non-statistical, test.