head to head · open source
bigbluebutton vs meet
bigbluebutton has 9,223 GitHub stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. meet has 2,376 stars, 289 forks, 183 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bigbluebutton leads on adoption by 288% (9,223 vs 2,376 stars). bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript under LGPL-3.0; meet is written in Python under MIT. bigbluebutton has attracted 65% as many forks as stars, meet 12%. meet 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 | meet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.2K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | LGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.0K | ⑂ 289 |
| 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 meet if
- You want the meet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and meet 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 meet
La Suite Meet is an open source video conferencing application powered by LiveKit and built with Django and React. It lives in the open source WebRTC and collaboration software ecosystem, and it is released under the MIT License. The project provides browser based meetings without a required installation, and its public instances are used inside French public administration.
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Frequently asked questions
Is bigbluebutton or meet more popular?
bigbluebutton has 9,223 GitHub stars and meet has 2,376. bigbluebutton has the larger community by that measure.
Are bigbluebutton and meet free?
Both are open source. bigbluebutton is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and meet under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between bigbluebutton and meet?
bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript and meet in Python. 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 meet?
Choose bigbluebutton if you want the larger community (9,223 stars) or its LGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose meet if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.