head to head · open source
Buzz vs Campfire
Buzz has 33,508 GitHub stars, 4,389 forks, 3,556 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Campfire has 4,629 stars, 792 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Buzz leads on adoption by 624% (33,508 vs 4,629 stars). Buzz is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; Campfire is written in Ruby under MIT. Buzz has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Campfire 17%. Buzz was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Buzz | Campfire | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.4K | ⑂ 792 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Buzz if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Campfire if
- You want the Campfire feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Campfire fits your workflow better
About Buzz
Buzz is a self hostable workspace platform where humans and AI agents collaborate in shared rooms, using a single Nostr based event log as the underlying data model. It unifies team chat, project management, and agent automation into one coherent interface, replacing fragmented tools with a unified protocol for events like messages, code patches, CI results, workflow steps, and approvals. Built in Rust and licensed under Apache 2.0, it runs as a single relay deployment per community or as a multi tenant hosted service sharing infrastructure while preserving strict community boundaries.
About Campfire
Campfire is a web based group chat application in the Business Software / Collaboration & Communication category. It is written in Ruby, released under the MIT license, and presented as a self hosted service that avoids recurring subscription fees. The project lives in the Ruby and Docker self hosting ecosystem, with its homepage at https://once.com/campfire and its published Docker image at ghcr.io/basecamp/once campfire:latest.
read the full Campfire overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Buzz or Campfire more popular?
Buzz has 33,508 GitHub stars and Campfire has 4,629. Buzz has the larger community by that measure.
Are Buzz and Campfire free?
Both are open source. Buzz is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Campfire under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Buzz and Campfire?
Buzz is written in Rust and Campfire in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Buzz or Campfire?
Choose Buzz if you want the larger community (33,508 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Campfire if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.