Indian YouTube Alternatives: Moj, Chingari & More (2026)
2026-03-20
YouTube has over 500 million monthly users in India. It's the default for music, tutorials, news, cricket highlights, everything. So when people ask about "Indian alternatives to YouTube," the honest starting point is: nothing replaces the whole thing.
But that's not really what most people are looking for. They want an alternative for a specific use case. Maybe they're tired of sitting through three ads before a 4-minute video, or they want short-form content in Tamil or Marathi without Instagram's algorithm burying it. Plenty of people just want free movies.
YouTube Premium costs Rs 129/month and fewer than 5% of Indian users pay for it. Paying to remove ads still feels wrong to most people here. Meanwhile, YouTube keeps tightening its ad-blocker crackdown and adding new monetization rules that frustrate creators. The demand for alternatives is real, even if the alternatives are imperfect.
Here's what's actually out there, with honest takes on each.
Short-form video (YouTube Shorts alternatives)
After TikTok got banned in 2020, a bunch of Indian apps rushed to fill the gap. Moj came out on top. Josh lost most of its audience and has since pivoted to paid live calls.
Moj (by ShareChat)
Moj won the post-TikTok race. Built by Mohalla Tech (ShareChat's parent company), it has 160M+ monthly active users and 100M+ creators posting in 15+ Indian languages. Combined with ShareChat, the whole ecosystem reaches 325M+ MAU. If you're looking for short videos in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, or Marathi, this is where the creators went.
The good parts:
- Huge creator base across regional languages. This is where Moj really stands apart from Instagram Reels.
- The recommendation algorithm is surprisingly good at surfacing content in your language
- Editing tools, effects, and music are built in
- Everything is free
- The short drama format has taken off and it's actually entertaining
Where it falls short:
- A lot of content is low-effort viral bait. You'll scroll past plenty of junk.
- No long-form video at all, so it only replaces YouTube Shorts, not YouTube itself
- The app is aggressive with notifications. Turning them off doesn't fully work.
- If you want educational or niche content, you won't find much here
Pricing: Free | Visit Moj
Josh (by Dailyhunt/VerSe Innovation)
This one's hard to recommend as a YouTube alternative in 2026, for two separate reasons.
First, it isn't mainly a short-video app any more. The Play listing is now titled "Josh - Live Calls & Chat", and the product leads with paid per-minute 1:1 live calls and chat. Short video is still in there, but it is not what the app is built around now.
Second, the audience collapsed. Josh was backed by VerSe Innovation, which raised $800M at a $5B valuation in 2022. The app peaked at 150M monthly users. By mid-2024 that was about 9.4M, and monthly downloads fell roughly 80%. VerSe cut about 30% of its staff in May 2025.
It still supports 12 Indian languages and has 290M+ cumulative Play Store installs, with the listing last updated in April 2026.
The good parts:
- 12 Indian languages, with real Tier 2 and Tier 3 reach
- Free to download and watch — the paid features are opt-in per-minute calls
- Paid 1:1 live calls give creators a direct earning route, which most short-video apps don't
- Still actively maintained
Where it falls short:
- If you want a YouTube Shorts replacement, this is no longer that app
- Monthly users dropped from 150M to under 10M. That's a collapse.
- Monthly downloads went from 6 lakh to 1.1 lakh between 2023 and 2024
- Parent company VerSe cut roughly 30% of staff in May 2025
- The app's future as a standalone short-video product is unclear
Pricing: Free | Visit Josh
Chingari
Chingari is not really a short-video app any more, and it's worth being clear about that before you download it expecting one. Its own Google Play listing is now titled "Chingari - Live & Audio Room", and the company markets it mainly as a live-audio-room product. Trade press dates the pivot to June 2023, away from short video and toward paid private live streaming. Short video still exists in the app; it is no longer the main surface.
The Play listing shows 110M+ downloads and a 4.1-star rating from about 666,000 ratings on the Indian store, with content in 20+ Indian languages.
The good parts:
- Live audio and video rooms are the real product here, and they're decent
- Strong regional-language coverage across 20+ Indian languages
- Free to download and watch, with no subscription tier
- Creators can earn through coins and virtual gifts, withdrawable to UPI or Paytm
- Actively maintained — the app was last updated in August 2026
Where it falls short:
- If you came for TikTok-style short video, this is the wrong app now
- The GARI crypto token, which Chingari once promoted heavily as a creator earning benefit, is effectively defunct — it trades roughly 99.9% below its peak. Don't factor it into any earning plan.
- The company is under real financial pressure: operating revenue fell 53% in FY25 (about Rs 92 crore to Rs 44 crore), with roughly Rs 2.2 crore of cash at the end of March 2025
- Coin-to-cash withdrawals can take up to 15 working days, per Chingari's own help docs
- Content moderation has been criticised as inconsistent
What users say: "Good for live streaming but the short video content isn't as good as Moj" and "The earning features are interesting but payouts are small."
Pricing: Free | Visit Chingari
Roposo (by Glance/InMobi) — appears to have shut down
Do not download this one. An earlier version of this post recommended Roposo as a live-commerce alternative. That was written when the service was running, and it no longer is.
We re-checked on 31 August 2026 and three signals agree:
- roposo.com serves no pages. The domain resolves and completes a TLS handshake, but every request returns nothing and times out. A known-good control URL returned 200 in the same batch, so this is a dead origin, not a problem at our end.
- Both Android apps are delisted.
com.roposo.androidandcom.roposo.clouteach return Google Play's not-found page. Live control apps checked by the same method in the same batch returned full listings. - Roposo Clout Marketplace formally "concluded its operations" effective 1 April 2026.
Glance (InMobi's consumer brand) had acquired Roposo and pivoted it from short video to live commerce. Glance's own lock-screen product on Samsung and Xiaomi phones is a separate thing and is still operating — it's only Roposo that is gone.
We've kept the Roposo page up as a record of what happened rather than deleting it, but there is no working service to sign up for.
Long-form video and streaming
If you use YouTube mostly to watch movies, shows, or long-form content, these Indian OTT platforms might scratch that itch. They're proper streaming services though, not user-generated content platforms. You can't upload your own videos.
ZEE5
ZEE5 has about 120M monthly users, 200K+ hours of content across 12 languages, and around 11% of India's OTT market. Think of it as a Netflix competitor with much stronger regional language content. If you watch shows in Bengali, Marathi, or Kannada, ZEE5 probably has a better library than anyone else.
The good parts:
- Best vernacular content library in India, period
- Free tier with ads (most competitors don't offer this)
- Good original series
- TV show episodes a day before they air on TV
Where it falls short:
- The free tier bombards you with ads
- Almost no sports content
- The interface can feel cluttered with promotional banners
- You can't upload anything. This is curated content only.
What users say: "Best platform for regional language content in India" and "The free tier is good but ads are really frequent."
Pricing: Free with ads | Premium Rs 999/year | Visit ZEE5
MX Player (Amazon MX Player)
MX Player started life as the best video player app on Android. Then it became a streaming platform. Then Amazon bought it for about $100M in 2024 and merged it with Amazon miniTV. The combined platform now has 250M users and a massive free content library supported by ads.
If you want free movies and shows without paying for a subscription, this is the closest thing to YouTube's "free entertainment" model in the OTT world.
The good parts:
- Huge free library with movies, web series, and TV shows
- International dramas (Korean, Turkish, Thai) available at no cost
- Still works as the best local video player on Android
- Offline downloads even on the free tier
Where it falls short:
- The ads are unskippable and they keep increasing
- Since Amazon took over, some popular content moved to Prime Video behind a paywall
- Quality of original content is inconsistent
- The video player app and streaming service feel confusingly bundled together
What users say: "Best free streaming option in India but the ads keep getting worse" and "Some shows disappeared after the Amazon takeover."
Pricing: Free with ads | Visit MX Player
JioHotstar (formerly Disney+ Hotstar + JioCinema)
JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar merged in February 2025, and the resulting platform is massive: 503M monthly users, 1B+ downloads, 300,000+ hours of content in 19 languages. JioHotstar signed up 280M paid subscribers within 3.5 months of launching.
If you want one platform for IPL cricket, Bollywood, Hollywood, HBO shows, and regional content, this is it. But it costs more than it used to.
The good parts:
- Biggest content library in India at 300K+ hours across 19 languages
- IPL and major cricket tournaments (though no longer free)
- Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, HBO, and Peacock content in one place
- 503M monthly users means this is where everyone is
Where it falls short:
- The Premium plan at Rs 2,199/year is the priciest Indian OTT subscription
- IPL used to be free on JioCinema. Now you need a paid plan. People are still annoyed about this.
- The IPL 2025 opener had major audio and buffering problems
- Even paid subscribers see ads during live sports. Yes, really.
- Finding content after the merger is confusing. Two libraries smashed together without great organization.
Pricing: Free tier | Premium Rs 499-2,199/year | Visit JioHotstar
Quick comparison
| Platform | Type | MAU | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moj | Short video | 160M+ | Free | Regional short videos |
| Josh | Paid live calls + chat | ~9M (declining) | Free + paid calls | Creator earnings via 1:1 calls |
| Chingari | Live audio/video rooms | 110M+ downloads | Free | Live rooms in regional languages |
| Roposo | — | — | — | Shut down — do not download |
| ZEE5 | OTT streaming | 120M | Free/Rs 999/yr | Regional content |
| MX Player | OTT streaming | 250M | Free | Free movies/shows |
| JioHotstar | OTT streaming | 503M | Free/Rs 499-2,199/yr | Cricket + everything |
So what should you actually use?
If you want short videos in Indian languages, get Moj. It's the clear leader with 160M+ users and the best regional content. Josh has pivoted to paid live calls and its short-video audience has mostly left. Chingari is worth a look only if you specifically want live audio rooms, not short video. Roposo is shut down — skip any list that still recommends it.
If you want free movies and shows, MX Player has the largest free library. ZEE5's free tier is good for regional language content specifically.
If you want everything in one place and don't mind paying, JioHotstar has the most content by far. But expect ads even on paid plans during cricket.
Nobody has built an Indian YouTube for education and tutorials. YouTube's free educational content in Indian languages has no real competition. Same goes for music, where JioSaavn and Gaana are the Indian options but that's a separate conversation.
Most people will realistically keep YouTube and add an Indian app alongside it. That's fine. For short-form entertainment in regional languages, Moj is a real alternative. For everything else, YouTube is still hard to beat.