head to head · open source
univer vs bigbluebutton
univer has 14,417 GitHub stars, 1,303 forks, 151 open issues and last shipped today. bigbluebutton has 9,223 stars, 5,982 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. univer leads on adoption by 56% (14,417 vs 9,223 stars). univer is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript under LGPL-3.0. univer has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, bigbluebutton 65%. univer 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
| univer | bigbluebutton | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 6.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick univer if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 JavaScript
- You evaluated both and bigbluebutton fits your workflow better
About univer
Univer is an open source, full stack office SDK for building spreadsheet, document and presentation interfaces inside your own product. Rather than shipping an end user office suite, it gives developers the primitives — a Canvas based renderer, a formula engine, a plugin architecture and a single Facade API — to embed spreadsheet and document editing into a web application or run the same logic headlessly on Node.js.
read the full univer overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is univer or bigbluebutton more popular?
univer has 14,417 GitHub stars and bigbluebutton has 9,223. univer has the larger community by that measure.
Are univer and bigbluebutton free?
Both are open source. univer is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bigbluebutton under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between univer and bigbluebutton?
univer is written in TypeScript and bigbluebutton in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, univer or bigbluebutton?
Choose univer if you want the larger community (14,417 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bigbluebutton if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.