head to head
Slack vs Jitsi
Jitsi is the open source alternative to Slack — channel-based team messaging platform. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Jitsi is a viable free replacement for Slack. Jitsi is open source under Apache-2.0, written in TypeScript, with 29,931 GitHub stars, 8,026 forks and 141 open issues; it was last pushed 7 hours ago. Slack costs from $8, while self-hosting Jitsi carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 3 other open source Slack alternatives are tracked here, led by Mattermost at 39,093 stars. Jitsi ranks #2 of 4 tracked open source Slack alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Mattermost (39,093 stars), Zulip (25,921 stars), Element (13,461 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Jitsi and 3 reasons to stay on Slack.
choose Jitsi if
- Your Slack bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Slack if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Slack integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Jitsi (open source) | Slack | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $8.75-$12.50/user/month |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — jitsi/jitsi-meet | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 30K · ⑂ 8.0K | — |
| Built with | TypeScript | — |
Why people look for a Slack alternative
About Jitsi
Jitsi Meet is an open source video conferencing platform built on WebRTC standards, designed for privacy focused, account free video calls. It operates as a standalone web application or embeddable component, supporting both browser based and native mobile usage without requiring user accounts to join meetings. The project lives in the video communication ecosystem, competing directly with proprietary services like Zoom, Google Meet, and Slack’s built in calling.
read the full Jitsi overview →
Other open source alternatives to Slack
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Jitsi a good replacement for Slack?
Jitsi is an open source alternative to Slack (Channel-based team messaging platform). It is written in TypeScript and licensed under Apache-2.0, with 29,931 GitHub stars.
Is Jitsi free compared to Slack?
Yes. Jitsi is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Slack is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Slack to Jitsi?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Jitsi's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.