head to head · open source
cobalt vs bigbluebutton
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. bigbluebutton has 9,219 stars, 5,981 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cobalt leads on adoption by 370% (43,316 vs 9,219 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; bigbluebutton is written in JavaScript under LGPL-3.0. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, bigbluebutton 65%. bigbluebutton 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
| cobalt | bigbluebutton | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 6.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- 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 cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt 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 cobalt or bigbluebutton more popular?
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars and bigbluebutton has 9,219. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and bigbluebutton free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and bigbluebutton under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and bigbluebutton?
cobalt is written in Svelte 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, cobalt or bigbluebutton?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,316 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose bigbluebutton if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.