head to head · open source
bigbluebutton vs galene
bigbluebutton has 9,266 GitHub stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped yesterday. galene has 1,429 stars, 207 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. bigbluebutton leads on adoption by 548% (9,266 vs 1,429 stars). bigbluebutton is written in TypeScript 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| bigbluebutton | galene | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.3K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | LGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.0K | ⑂ 207 |
| 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 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 ============= 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 galene
The Galene videoconferencing system Galene is a fully featured videoconferencing system that is easy to deploy and requires very moderate server resources. It is described at . Quick start Point your browser at , ignore the unknown certificate warning, and log in with username vimes and password sybil . For full installation instructions, please see the file [galene install.md][1] in this directory. Documentation [galene install.md][1]: full installation instructions [galene.md][2]: usage and administration; [galene client.md][3]: writing clients; [galene protocol.md][4]: the client protocol; [galene api.md][5]…
read the full galene 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 bigbluebutton or galene more popular?
bigbluebutton has 9,266 GitHub stars and galene has 1,429. 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 TypeScript 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 (9,266 stars) or its LGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose galene if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.