head to head · open source
Buzz vs chat
Buzz has 36,686 GitHub stars, 4,869 forks, 3,556 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chat has 13,547 stars, 2,093 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Buzz leads on adoption by 171% (36,686 vs 13,547 stars). Buzz is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; chat is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Buzz has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, chat 15%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Buzz | chat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Buzz if
- You weight community size — 37K 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 chat if
- You want the chat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and chat fits your workflow better
About Buzz
Buzz 🐝 A workspace where humans and agents build together, on a relay you own. Vision · Sovereign · Forge · Agents · Architecture · Releasing · Apache 2.0 People and agents building together in the same room. What is this, really? Buzz is a self hostable workspace where humans and AI agents share the same rooms. A Buzz community is the workspace a user reaches by URL. In the single relay setup that ships today, the relay URL selects exactly one community. A hosted operator can serve many communities behind many domains or subdomains, but the client facing rule stays the same: the URL is authoritative for the…
About chat
Tinode Instant Messaging Server Instant messaging full stack. Backend in pure Go (license GPL 3.0), clients for Android (Java), iOS (Swift), and web (ReactJS), as well as gRPC client support for C++, C , Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Objective C, etc (all clients licensed under Apache 2.0). Wire transport is JSON over websocket (long polling is also available) or protobuf with gRPC. This is beta quality software: feature complete and stable but probably with a few bugs or missing features. Follow instructions to install and run or use one of the cloud services below. Read API documentation. Tinode is not…
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 Buzz or chat more popular?
Buzz has 36,686 GitHub stars and chat has 13,547. Buzz has the larger community by that measure.
Are Buzz and chat free?
Both are open source. Buzz is licensed under Apache-2.0 and chat under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Buzz and chat?
Buzz is written in Rust and chat 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, Buzz or chat?
Choose Buzz if you want the larger community (36,686 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose chat if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.