head to head · open source
chat vs bigbluebutton
chat has 13,548 GitHub stars, 2,093 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. bigbluebutton has 9,266 stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped today. chat leads on adoption by 46% (13,548 vs 9,266 stars). chat is written in Go under GPL-3.0; bigbluebutton is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0. chat has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, bigbluebutton 65%. bigbluebutton was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| chat | bigbluebutton | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-25 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 6.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chat if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 TypeScript
- You evaluated both and bigbluebutton fits your workflow better
About chat
Tinode Instant Messaging Server Instant messaging full stack. Backend in pure Go (license GPL 3.0), clients for Android (Java), iOS (Swift), and web (ReactJS), as well as gRPC client support for C++, C , Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Objective C, etc (all clients licensed under Apache 2.0). Wire transport is JSON over websocket (long polling is also available) or protobuf with gRPC. This is beta quality software: feature complete and stable but probably with a few bugs or missing features. Follow instructions to install and run or use one of the cloud services below. Read API documentation. Tinode is not…
About bigbluebutton
BigBlueButton ============= BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn. BigBlueButton supports real time sharing of audio, video, slides (with whiteboard annotations), chat, and the screen. Instructors can engage remote students with polling, emojis, multi user whiteboards, shared notes, and breakout rooms. During the session, BigBlueButton generates analytics that are visible to moderators in the Learning Analytics Dashboard. Presenters can record and playback content for later sharing with others. We designed BigBlueButton for online learning, it can be…
read the full bigbluebutton overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chat or bigbluebutton more popular?
chat has 13,548 GitHub stars and bigbluebutton has 9,266. chat has the larger community by that measure.
Are chat and bigbluebutton free?
Both are open source. chat is licensed under GPL-3.0 and bigbluebutton under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chat and bigbluebutton?
chat is written in Go and bigbluebutton in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, chat or bigbluebutton?
Choose chat if you want the larger community (13,548 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose bigbluebutton if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.