How to Build an App Like Netflix: OTT Platform Architecture for Product Teams
- Riya ThambirajBuild & ShipLast updated on
Summary
To build an OTT platform like Netflix, you need: video upload and transcoding pipeline (HLS adaptive bitrate), a content catalog with metadata, user accounts and subscription billing, a video player with resume watching, and a recommendation engine. An MVP takes 14-20 weeks and costs $100K-$200K. Video transcoding, DRM (content protection), and CDN delivery are the core infrastructure requirements.
Key Takeaways
Video transcoding is the foundational infrastructure: every video must be encoded at multiple bitrates and delivered via adaptive streaming (HLS/DASH) to handle varying network conditions.
DRM (Digital Rights Management) is required for licensed content. Widevine (Android/Chrome), FairPlay (iOS/Safari), and PlayReady (Windows) must all be supported for cross-device protection.
The recommendation engine is Netflix's primary engagement lever -- but you need content and user behavior data first. Start with genre-based navigation; add personalization later.
Subscription billing complexity is underestimated: free trials, multiple tiers, proration, family plans, annual vs. monthly, and failed payment retry logic all require careful implementation.
Content licensing is often a larger cost than platform development. Original content requires production infrastructure. Licensed content requires per-title royalty accounting.
Netflix has 280 million subscribers and spends $17 billion a year on content. You are not building that.
What you might be building: a streaming platform for fitness content (Peloton-style), an educational video library (MasterClass-style), a niche entertainment platform for a specific genre or region, a corporate training video platform, or a creator-owned subscription video channel.
The infrastructure requirements overlap with Netflix. The scale, content investment, and distribution strategy are fundamentally different. This guide covers the infrastructure.
What streaming infrastructure actually is
Before planning features, understand what OTT streaming infrastructure consists of:
Video upload and processing pipeline: Raw video files uploaded, transcoded into multiple formats and bitrates, packaged for adaptive streaming, and optionally encrypted with DRM.
Content delivery network (CDN): The transcoded video segments are distributed to CDN edge servers close to your viewers. The player downloads segments from the nearest edge server, not from your origin.
Video player: The client-side component that downloads the HLS or DASH manifest, selects the appropriate bitrate, manages segment downloads, and handles playback controls.
Content catalog: Database of titles with metadata (title, description, genre, cast, runtime, thumbnail, content rating), organized for browse and search.
User and subscription management: Accounts, authentication, subscription billing, payment processing, multiple profiles, and content access gating.
Recommendation and discovery: How users find content to watch -- genre browsing, search, and personalized recommendations.
The video processing pipeline
Every video uploaded goes through this pipeline before it can be streamed:
- Ingest: Raw video file uploaded to S3
- Transcode: AWS MediaConvert or similar encodes to multiple resolutions (360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 4K) and formats (H.264 for compatibility, H.265/HEVC for efficiency)
- Package: Segment into HLS chunks (2-10 second segments), generate HLS manifest files
- DRM encrypt: Optional -- encrypt segments with Widevine and FairPlay DRM
- Thumbnail generation: Extract frames for episode thumbnails and preview strips
- Distribute: Push to CloudFront or Cloudflare CDN
This pipeline runs once per video. Processing time: 1-4 hours per hour of content at 1080p. For a 100-title library, plan the upload and processing schedule carefully -- it takes time.
Content catalog design
The content catalog is the database of everything you stream. Schema decisions made here affect search, browse, recommendations, and metadata display for the platform's lifetime.
A typical content catalog schema:
Title: The top-level entity (movie, series, documentary)
Episode: For series -- episode number, season, runtime, individual synopsis
Video assets: Links to processed video files per resolution and format
Metadata: Genre tags, cast, crew, release year, content rating, language, subtitles
Availability: Geographic restrictions, availability windows, licensing expiry dates
Build a content management tool for your catalog team from day one. They need to add, edit, and manage titles without developer involvement.
Subscription and billing
Subscription billing is more complex than it appears:
Trial periods: Free trials that convert automatically
Multiple tiers: Basic/Standard/Premium with different content access, stream quality, or simultaneous streams
Family plans: Multiple user profiles under one payment account
Annual vs. monthly: Discounted annual plans with prorated cancellations
Failed payment handling: Dunning sequences, retry logic, account suspension and reactivation
Churn flows: Pause account, cancel, win-back offers
Stripe Billing handles most of this, but your product logic needs to map subscription status to content access in real time. Every content request needs to check current subscription state.
DRM: The content protection decision
If you are streaming licensed content from studios, distributors, or rights holders, DRM is required by contract. There is no negotiation.
If you are streaming original content you own, DRM is optional -- but piracy becomes a concern at any meaningful scale.
DRM implementation requires:
A multi-DRM provider (Pallycon, AWS Elemental, or BuyDRM)
License server integration (DRM licenses are served separately from video segments)
Player-side DRM implementation (EME API in web browsers, native DRM APIs in mobile SDKs)
Plan 4-6 weeks for DRM implementation on top of a working streaming player.
Offline downloads
"Download for offline viewing" -- users can download episodes for watching without internet (airplanes, commutes). This is a premium feature on Netflix and a key differentiator for mobile platforms.
Technically: DRM-protected downloads with device limits (typically 3-5 downloaded titles per device), automatic expiry (downloaded content expires after 30-48 hours), and a download manager UI. Technically complex -- defer to v2.
Device support strategy
"Apps for everything" sounds good. It is expensive. Each platform is a separate codebase:
Web (React + HLS.js video player)
iOS (Swift + AVPlayer)
Android (Kotlin + ExoPlayer)
Apple TV (SwiftUI)
Android TV / Fire TV (Kotlin)
Roku (BrightScript -- a completely different language)
Samsung/LG Smart TV (proprietary SDKs)
For v1: web + iOS + Android. These three cover 90%+ of viewing. Add TV apps in v2.
Recommendation engine
For v1: genre-based browsing + "because you watched X" similarity. This is simple to implement and works well until you have a significant catalog and user behavior dataset.
For v2: collaborative filtering. Recommend based on what users with similar viewing patterns watch. Requires a recommendation service (can be built with Python + Apache Spark, or use AWS Personalize).
The recommendation engine is important for retention but not for launch. Spend the time on catalog quality and reliable streaming first.
Tech stack
| Layer | Choice |
|---|---|
| Video transcoding | AWS MediaConvert |
| Video packaging | AWS Elemental MediaPackage |
| DRM | Pallycon or AWS DRM |
| CDN | CloudFront or Cloudflare |
| Storage | AWS S3 |
| Web player | Video.js with HLS.js |
| iOS player | AVPlayer |
| Android player | ExoPlayer |
| Backend | Node.js |
| Database | PostgreSQL |
| Search | Elasticsearch |
| Billing | Stripe Billing |
| Auth | Auth0 or custom JWT |
Cost to build
| Scope | Timeline | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Web + iOS + Android MVP | 14-20 weeks | $100K-$200K |
| With DRM and offline downloads | 20-28 weeks | $180K-$320K |
| With TV apps (Apple TV, Android TV) | Add 8-12 weeks | Add $60K-$100K |
Monthly infrastructure: $3K-$20K at small scale. Video CDN bandwidth is the largest variable cost.
How RaftLabs approaches OTT
We build OTT platforms where the content strategy is clear: a focused niche, an owned content library, or a rights deal with specific titles. The hardest part of OTT is not the platform -- it is acquiring content and subscribers.
We scope the platform to the content catalog and device targets that are realistic for the business model. A 100-title fitness library needs different infrastructure than a 50,000-title licensed catalog.
If you have a content strategy and need the platform built around it, let's discuss what the right build looks like.
Frequently Asked Questions
- An MVP with video streaming, content catalog, user accounts, and subscription billing takes 14-20 weeks with a team of 4-6 developers. Adding multi-device apps (TV, mobile, web), DRM, and offline downloads extends to 6-10 months. A full Netflix-equivalent with personalization, multiple profiles, and advanced analytics takes 12+ months of sustained development.
- MVP development: $100K-$200K. Monthly infrastructure costs: $3K-$20K at small scale, heavily dependent on content library size, streaming volume, and CDN costs. Video bandwidth is the largest variable cost: at standard definition (1GB/hour), 100K monthly active users watching 2 hours/month = 200TB of data transfer. CDN costs for this volume run $5K-$15K/month depending on provider and geography.
- HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) is Apple's streaming protocol, now an industry standard. It works by: encoding video at multiple bitrates (360p, 720p, 1080p, 4K), splitting each version into short segments (2-10 seconds), and creating a manifest file listing all variants. The video player downloads the manifest, assesses network conditions, and selects the appropriate bitrate. If the connection slows, it drops to a lower bitrate automatically -- preventing buffering. This is why Netflix works on a slow hotel WiFi and a fast fiber connection without manual quality selection.
- DRM (Digital Rights Management) is content encryption that prevents unauthorized copying and redistribution of protected video. It is required for: any licensed content from studios or distributors, original content if you want to prevent piracy, and most enterprise training content. Three DRM systems cover all modern devices: Widevine (Android, Chrome), FairPlay (iOS, Safari, Apple TV), and PlayReady (Windows, Xbox). Implementing multi-DRM requires a DRM provider (Pallycon, BuyDRM, or AWS Elemental MediaPackage with DRM). DRM adds 4-6 weeks to the build timeline.
- Netflix uses collaborative filtering (users similar to you watch X, you might like X) combined with content-based signals (you watch crime dramas, show more crime dramas) and viewing behavior data (completion rate, rewatch, time of day). New users get genre-based recommendations until enough behavior is collected. For early-stage platforms, genre navigation and 'similar to what you watched' is sufficient. Full collaborative filtering needs thousands of users with meaningful watch history before it outperforms simple genre matching.
