head to head · open source
Rocket.Chat vs plots2
Rocket.Chat has 46,361 GitHub stars, 14,076 forks, 4,023 open issues and last shipped yesterday. plots2 has 1,026 stars, 1,870 forks, 582 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Rocket.Chat leads on adoption by 4,419% (46,361 vs 1,026 stars). Rocket.Chat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; plots2 is written in Ruby under GPL-3.0. Rocket.Chat has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, plots2 182%. Rocket.Chat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (collaboration, hacktoberfest, javascript), 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 | plots2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-12-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 14K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 plots2 if
- You want the plots2 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and plots2 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 plots2
PublicLab.org ====== The content management system for the Public Lab research community, the plots2 web application is a combination of a group research blog what we call "research notes" and a wiki. Read more about the data model here. Begin running (and contributing to) this codebase immediately with GitPod: It showcases a variety of features that help the Public Lab community collaborate on environmental technology, design, documentation, and community organizing. Originally a Drupal site, it was rewritten in 2012 with Ruby on Rails and has since extended but not yet entirely replaced the legacy Drupal data…
read the full plots2 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Rocket.Chat or plots2 more popular?
Rocket.Chat has 46,361 GitHub stars and plots2 has 1,026. Rocket.Chat has the larger community by that measure.
Are Rocket.Chat and plots2 free?
Both are open source. Rocket.Chat has no licence declared in this registry, and plots2 is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Rocket.Chat and plots2?
Rocket.Chat is written in TypeScript and plots2 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, Rocket.Chat or plots2?
Choose Rocket.Chat if you want the larger community (46,361 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose plots2 if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.