head to head · open source
Soketi vs ess-helm
Soketi has 5,635 GitHub stars, 363 forks, 142 open issues and last shipped 1.7 years ago. ess-helm has 999 stars, 154 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Soketi leads on adoption by 464% (5,635 vs 999 stars). Soketi is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; ess-helm is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Soketi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, ess-helm 15%. ess-helm 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.
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Side by side
| Soketi | ess-helm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.6K | ★ 999 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2025-03-03 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 363 | ⑂ 154 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Soketi if
- You weight community size — 5.6K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ess-helm if
- You want the ess-helm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ess-helm fits your workflow better
About Soketi
soketi Next gen, Pusher compatible, open source WebSockets server. Simple, fast, and resilient. 📣 🤝 Supporting Soketi is meant to be open source, forever and ever. It solves issues that many developers face the one of wanting to be limitless while testing locally or performing benchmarks. More than that, itt is also suited for production usage, either it is public for your frontend applications or internal to your team. The frequency of releases and maintenance is based on the available time, which is tight as hell. Recently, there were issues with the maintenance and this caused infrequent updates, as well as…
read the full Soketi overview →
About ess-helm
The official Matrix stack from Element for non commercial use Element Server Suite Community Edition (ESS Community) allows you to deploy a Matrix stack using the provided Helm charts and a Kubernetes distribution of your choice, even if you don't have Kubernetes knowledge. It is provided for non commercial community use cases with quality in mind and aims to be as easy to use as possible. ESS Community enables you to very quickly deploy a solid Matrix stack fully supporting Matrix 2.0 and gives you the flexibility to make it your own. Below you will find a quick setup guide that gives you everything needed to…
read the full ess-helm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Soketi or ess-helm more popular?
Soketi has 5,635 GitHub stars and ess-helm has 999. Soketi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Soketi and ess-helm free?
Both are open source. Soketi is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ess-helm under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Soketi and ess-helm?
Soketi is written in TypeScript and ess-helm in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Soketi or ess-helm?
Choose Soketi if you want the larger community (5,635 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ess-helm if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.