head to head · open source
Trench vs Telephone
Trench has 1,666 GitHub stars, 66 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Telephone has 1,177 stars, 241 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. Trench leads on adoption by 42% (1,666 vs 1,177 stars). Trench is written in TypeScript under MIT; Telephone is written in Swift under GPL-3.0. Trench has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Telephone 20%. Telephone 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
| Trench | Telephone | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 1.7K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-10-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 66 | ⑂ 241 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Trench if
- You weight community size — 1.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Telephone if
- You want the Telephone feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and Telephone fits your workflow better
About Trench
Open Source Analytics Infrastructure Documentation · Website · Slack Community · Demo 🌊 What is Trench? Trench is an event tracking system built on top of Apache Kafka and ClickHouse. It can handle large event volumes and provides real time analytics. Trench is no cookie, GDPR, and PECR compliant. Users have full control to access, rectify, or delete their data. Our team built Trench to scale up the real time event tracking pipeline at Frigade . ⭐ Features 🤝 Compliant with the Segment API (Track, Group, Identify) 🐳 Deploy quickly with a single production ready Docker image 💻 Process thousands of events per…
read the full Trench overview →
About Telephone
Telephone is a VoIP SIP softphone for Mac. It allows you to make phone calls over the Internet or your company network. If your phone line supports SIP protocol, you can use it on your Mac instead of a physical phone anywhere you have a decent network connection. Building Opus Opus codec is optional. Download: $ curl O $ tar xzvf opus 1.3.1.tar.gz $ cd opus 1.3.1 Build and install: $ ./configure prefix=/path/to/Telephone/ThirdParty/Opus disable shared CFLAGS=' arch arm64 arch x86 64 Os mmacosx version min=15.6' $ make $ make install LibreSSL Download: $ curl O $ curl O $ gpg verify libressl 3.1.5.tar.gz.asc $…
read the full Telephone overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trench or Telephone more popular?
Trench has 1,666 GitHub stars and Telephone has 1,177. Trench has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trench and Telephone free?
Both are open source. Trench is licensed under MIT and Telephone under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trench and Telephone?
Trench is written in TypeScript and Telephone in Swift. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Trench or Telephone?
Choose Trench if you want the larger community (1,666 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Telephone if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.