head to head · open source
bigbluebutton vs galene
bigbluebutton has 9,223 GitHub stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. galene has 1,406 stars, 195 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. bigbluebutton leads on adoption by 556% (9,223 vs 1,406 stars). bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript under LGPL-3.0; galene is written in Go under MIT. bigbluebutton has attracted 65% as many forks as stars, galene 14%. bigbluebutton was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (video-conferencing, webrtc), 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 | galene | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.2K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | LGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.0K | ⑂ 195 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick bigbluebutton if
- You weight community size — 9.2K stars and counting
- You want the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick galene if
- You want the galene feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and galene fits your workflow better
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 →
About galene
Galene is a videoconference server. It lives in the Go, WebRTC, SFU, video conferencing, file sharing, and webapp ecosystem. It is listed as Business Software / Collaboration & Communication. It is described as a fully featured, easy to deploy videoconferencing system requiring very moderate server resources. It gives browser users named groups, operator permissions, and file sharing. It solves the problem of running video meetings without a heavy hosted stack. It also supports extension, because the README points to client, protocol, and administrative API documents.
read the full galene overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is bigbluebutton or galene more popular?
bigbluebutton has 9,223 GitHub stars and galene has 1,406. bigbluebutton has the larger community by that measure.
Are bigbluebutton and galene free?
Both are open source. bigbluebutton is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and galene under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between bigbluebutton and galene?
bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript and galene in Go. 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 galene?
Choose bigbluebutton if you want the larger community (9,223 stars) or its LGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose galene if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.