head to head · open source
bigbluebutton vs docker-jitsi-meet
bigbluebutton has 9,266 GitHub stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped yesterday. docker-jitsi-meet has 3,620 stars, 1,584 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. bigbluebutton leads on adoption by 156% (9,266 vs 3,620 stars). bigbluebutton is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0; docker-jitsi-meet is written in Lua under Apache-2.0. bigbluebutton has attracted 65% as many forks as stars, docker-jitsi-meet 44%. bigbluebutton was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (video-conferencing), 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
| bigbluebutton | docker-jitsi-meet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.3K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | LGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.0K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick bigbluebutton if
- You weight community size — 9.3K stars and counting
- You want the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick docker-jitsi-meet if
- You want the docker-jitsi-meet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and docker-jitsi-meet fits your workflow better
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 →
About docker-jitsi-meet
Jitsi Meet on Docker Jitsi is a set of Open Source projects that allows you to easily build and deploy secure videoconferencing solutions. Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted, 100% Open Source video conferencing solution that you can use all day, every day, for free — with no account needed. This repository contains the necessary tools to run a Jitsi Meet stack on Docker using Docker Compose. All our images are published on the GitHub Container Registry (GHCR). Tags These are the currently published tags for all our images: Tag Description stable Points to the latest stable release stable NNNN X A stable release…
read the full docker-jitsi-meet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is bigbluebutton or docker-jitsi-meet more popular?
bigbluebutton has 9,266 GitHub stars and docker-jitsi-meet has 3,620. bigbluebutton has the larger community by that measure.
Are bigbluebutton and docker-jitsi-meet free?
Both are open source. bigbluebutton is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and docker-jitsi-meet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between bigbluebutton and docker-jitsi-meet?
bigbluebutton is written in TypeScript and docker-jitsi-meet in Lua. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, bigbluebutton or docker-jitsi-meet?
Choose bigbluebutton if you want the larger community (9,266 stars) or its LGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose docker-jitsi-meet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.