head to head · open source
Zen vs Quiet
Zen has 4,225 GitHub stars, 143 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Quiet has 2,647 stars, 145 forks, 773 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zen leads on adoption by 60% (4,225 vs 2,647 stars). Zen is written in Go under MIT; Quiet is written in C under GPL-3.0. Zen has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Quiet 5%. Quiet was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (privacy), 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
| Zen | Quiet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.2K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 143 | ⑂ 145 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zen if
- You weight community size — 4.2K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 Zen
Zen is an open source desktop application written in Go for Windows, macOS, and Linux under the MIT license. It operates as a system wide ad blocker and privacy guard, so it applies to traffic from applications on the machine rather than only to browser tabs. It lives in the desktop security and privacy ecosystem, where users want filtering without browser extensions.
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 Zen or Quiet more popular?
Zen has 4,225 GitHub stars and Quiet has 2,647. Zen has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen and Quiet free?
Both are open source. Zen is licensed under MIT and Quiet under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zen and Quiet?
Zen is written in Go 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, Zen or Quiet?
Choose Zen if you want the larger community (4,225 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Quiet if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.