head to head · open source
Buzz vs bigbluebutton
Buzz has 33,704 GitHub stars, 4,429 forks, 3,556 open issues and last shipped today. bigbluebutton has 9,223 stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Buzz leads on adoption by 265% (33,704 vs 9,223 stars). Buzz is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript under LGPL-3.0. Buzz has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, bigbluebutton 65%. Buzz was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Buzz | bigbluebutton | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.4K | ⑂ 6.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Buzz if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bigbluebutton if
- You want the bigbluebutton feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and bigbluebutton fits your workflow better
About Buzz
Buzz is a self hostable workspace platform where humans and AI agents collaborate in shared rooms, using a single Nostr based event log as the underlying data model. It unifies team chat, project management, and agent automation into one coherent interface, replacing fragmented tools with a unified protocol for events like messages, code patches, CI results, workflow steps, and approvals. Built in Rust and licensed under Apache 2.0, it runs as a single relay deployment per community or as a multi tenant hosted service sharing infrastructure while preserving strict community boundaries.
About bigbluebutton
BigBlueButton is an open source web conferencing system built for virtual classes, described by its maintainers as an open source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn. It lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and is distributed under the LGPL 3.0 license. The project has been developed for roughly sixteen years, carries 9,215 stars and 5,978 forks on GitHub, and its latest release is BigBlueButton 3.0. It supports real time sharing of audio, video, slides with whiteboard annotations, chat, and screen, and it ships with GreenLight as its default front end.
read the full bigbluebutton overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Collaboration & Communication projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Collaboration & Communication field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Buzz or bigbluebutton more popular?
Buzz has 33,704 GitHub stars and bigbluebutton has 9,223. Buzz has the larger community by that measure.
Are Buzz and bigbluebutton free?
Both are open source. Buzz is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bigbluebutton under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Buzz and bigbluebutton?
Buzz is written in Rust and bigbluebutton in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Buzz or bigbluebutton?
Choose Buzz if you want the larger community (33,704 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bigbluebutton if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.