head to head · open source
Rocket.Chat vs excalidraw-collaboration
Rocket.Chat has 46,361 GitHub stars, 14,076 forks, 4,023 open issues and last shipped yesterday. excalidraw-collaboration has 634 stars, 107 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Rocket.Chat leads on adoption by 7,212% (46,361 vs 634 stars). Rocket.Chat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; excalidraw-collaboration is written in various languages under MIT. Rocket.Chat has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, excalidraw-collaboration 17%. Rocket.Chat 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
| Rocket.Chat | excalidraw-collaboration | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 634 |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | — |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 14K | ⑂ 107 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Rocket.Chat if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick excalidraw-collaboration if
- You want the excalidraw-collaboration feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- You evaluated both and excalidraw-collaboration fits your workflow better
About Rocket.Chat
The ultimate secure open source solution for team communications Rocket.Chat is an open source, secure, fully customizable communications platform developed in TypeScript for organizations with high standards of data protection. We are the ultimate solution for team communications, enabling real time conversations between colleagues, with other companies, and with your customers or citizens, regardless of how they connect with you. The result is an increase in productivity and user satisfaction rates. Every day, tens of millions of users in over 150 countries and in organizations such as Deutsche Bahn, The US…
read the full Rocket.Chat overview →
About excalidraw-collaboration
Excalidraw Collaboration Self hosted Excalidraw with live collaboration, scene storage, and a small set of Docker Compose deployment examples. Try it online The Railway demo is live and has been verified with alswl/excalidraw room go:v0.1.0 . If the demo is unavailable, deploy your own instance from the Railway template: Snapshot What is included An Excalidraw frontend configured through runtime environment variables. HTTP storage for scenes and files. A Socket.IO room service for real time collaboration, powered by excalidraw room go. A local Compose example and an HTTPS/Nginx production example. The exact…
read the full excalidraw-collaboration overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Rocket.Chat or excalidraw-collaboration more popular?
Rocket.Chat has 46,361 GitHub stars and excalidraw-collaboration has 634. Rocket.Chat has the larger community by that measure.
Are Rocket.Chat and excalidraw-collaboration free?
Both are open source. Rocket.Chat has no licence declared in this registry, and excalidraw-collaboration is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Rocket.Chat and excalidraw-collaboration?
Rocket.Chat is written in TypeScript and excalidraw-collaboration in various languages. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Rocket.Chat or excalidraw-collaboration?
Choose Rocket.Chat if you want the larger community (46,361 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose excalidraw-collaboration if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.