head to head · open source
Rocket.Chat vs partykit
Rocket.Chat has 46,361 GitHub stars, 14,076 forks, 4,023 open issues and last shipped yesterday. partykit has 5,745 stars, 206 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Rocket.Chat leads on adoption by 707% (46,361 vs 5,745 stars). Rocket.Chat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; partykit is written in TypeScript under MIT. Rocket.Chat has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, partykit 4%. Rocket.Chat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (collaboration, real-time), 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 | partykit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 14K | ⑂ 206 |
| 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 partykit if
- You want the partykit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and partykit 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 partykit
PartyKit simplifies developing multiplayer applications. With PartyKit, you can focus on building multiplayer apps or adding real time experiences to your existing projects with as little as one line of code. Meanwhile, PartyKit will handle operational complexity and real time infrastructure scaling. [!NOTE] Current development of this project is in cloudflare/partykit. Documentation Go to docs.partykit.io for documentation, guides and examples. Quick start Note: to run PartyKit, you need to have Node v. 17 or higher installed. You can create a PartyKit project by running: This will ask a few questions about…
read the full partykit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Rocket.Chat or partykit more popular?
Rocket.Chat has 46,361 GitHub stars and partykit has 5,745. Rocket.Chat has the larger community by that measure.
Are Rocket.Chat and partykit free?
Both are open source. Rocket.Chat has no licence declared in this registry, and partykit is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Rocket.Chat and partykit?
Rocket.Chat is written in TypeScript and partykit in TypeScript. 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 partykit?
Choose Rocket.Chat if you want the larger community (46,361 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose partykit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.