Each PeerTube instance provides a website to browse and watch videos, and is by default independent from others in terms of appearance, features and rules.

PeerTube was created by a web developer known as Chocobozzz as a peer-to-peer alternative to YouTube, utilizing the WebTorrent protocol to share videos.

[17] In May 2020, Framasoft published a roadmap of the software for the later half of the year and created a fundraising campaign requiring €60,000 for aiding the development.

[23] Official Android and iOS mobile apps were released, that provide ability to play content from PeerTube instances.

[24][25] Andoid app, available via F-Droid and Google Play, allow for access from all or limited number of instances, respectively.

This federation permits collectively hosting a large number of videos in a unified platform, without having to build an infrastructure comparable to that of the web giants.

PeerTube uses the ActivityPub protocol in order to allow decentralization and compatibility with other fediverse services, which can prevent vendor lock-in and makes it more resilient against censorship.

Unofficial PeerTube video playback integrations exist for popular platforms like Reddit[28] and Kodi.