head to head · open source
srs vs chat
srs has 29,414 GitHub stars, 5,708 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. chat has 13,547 stars, 2,093 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. srs leads on adoption by 117% (29,414 vs 13,547 stars). srs is written in C++ under MIT; chat is written in Go under GPL-3.0. srs has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, chat 15%. srs 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
| srs | chat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick srs if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chat if
- You want the chat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and chat fits your workflow better
About srs
SRS(Simple Realtime Server) SRS/8.0 (Free) is a simple, high performance, AI driven real time media server. It supports RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, HTTP FLV, SRT, MPEG DASH, and GB28181 on Linux and macOS across x86 64, ARMv7, AArch64, Apple M1, RISC V, LoongArch, and MIPS architectures. Supported codecs include H.264, H.265, AV1, VP9, AAC, Opus, and G.711. See the complete list of features. Note: For more details on the single node architecture for SRS, please visit the following link. SRS is licenced under MIT, and some third party libraries are distributed under their licenses. Usage Please check the Getting Started…
About chat
Tinode Instant Messaging Server Instant messaging full stack. Backend in pure Go (license GPL 3.0), clients for Android (Java), iOS (Swift), and web (ReactJS), as well as gRPC client support for C++, C , Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Objective C, etc (all clients licensed under Apache 2.0). Wire transport is JSON over websocket (long polling is also available) or protobuf with gRPC. This is beta quality software: feature complete and stable but probably with a few bugs or missing features. Follow instructions to install and run or use one of the cloud services below. Read API documentation. Tinode is not…
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Frequently asked questions
Is srs or chat more popular?
srs has 29,414 GitHub stars and chat has 13,547. srs has the larger community by that measure.
Are srs and chat free?
Both are open source. srs is licensed under MIT and chat under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between srs and chat?
srs is written in C++ and chat in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, srs or chat?
Choose srs if you want the larger community (29,414 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose chat if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.