head to head · open source
Stoat vs Quiet
Stoat has 3,336 GitHub stars, 388 forks, 139 open issues and last shipped today. Quiet has 2,647 stars, 145 forks, 773 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Stoat leads on adoption by 26% (3,336 vs 2,647 stars). Stoat is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; Quiet is written in C under GPL-3.0. Stoat has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Quiet 5%. Stoat 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
| Stoat | Quiet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.3K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 388 | ⑂ 145 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Stoat if
- You weight community size — 3.3K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Quiet if
- You want the Quiet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and Quiet fits your workflow better
About Stoat
Stoat is a Rust backend project that provides the services and libraries powering the Stoat group chat service. The repository is organized around core crates for configuration, database implementation, files, API models, permissions, presence, result types, and a coalesced crate.
read the full Stoat overview →
About Quiet
Quiet is an open source team chat application that aims to provide a private, peer to peer alternative to Slack, Discord, and Element. It is built around Tor and IPFS, and it is designed so that a team can communicate without trusting a central service or operating its own server. The project lives in the privacy and decentralized software ecosystem.
read the full Quiet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Stoat or Quiet more popular?
Stoat has 3,336 GitHub stars and Quiet has 2,647. Stoat has the larger community by that measure.
Are Stoat and Quiet free?
Both are open source. Stoat has no licence declared in this registry, and Quiet is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Stoat and Quiet?
Stoat is written in Rust and Quiet in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Stoat or Quiet?
Choose Stoat if you want the larger community (3,336 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Quiet if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.