bIRC Alternatives
bIRC is described as 'simple, lightweight and flexible IRC-Client written in Bash. bIRC doesn't require an installation and can be launched by executing a single script file. bIRC has plugin support and can be easily modified' and is a IRC Client in the social & communications category. There are more than 50 alternatives to bIRC for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD and Self-Hosted solutions. The best alternative is Thunderbird, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like bIRC are Pidgin, HexChat, mIRC and Quassel IRC.
bIRC is mainly a IRC Client but alternatives to it may also be Email Clients or Instant Messengers. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of bIRC.- Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail, news and instant messaging client. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- PortableApps.com
- Haiku
- Pidgin is an easy to use, multi-protocol chat client client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, and more chat networks all at once. It has built-in support for NSS, offering client-to-server message encryption for protocols that support it.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- PortableApps.com
- Xfce
- HexChat is an IRC client based on XChat for Linux , but unlike XChat it’s completely free for both Windows and Unix-like systems.
- mIRC is a popular Internet Relay Chat client used by millions of people, and thousands of organizations, to communicate, share, play and work with each other on IRC networks around the world.
- Quassel IRC is a modern, cross-platform, distributed IRC client based on the Qt4 framework.
- KVIrc is a free portable IRC client based on the excellent Qt GUI toolkit. KVirc is being written by Szymon Stefanek and the KVIrc Development Team with the contribution of many IRC addicted developers around the world.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- PortableApps.com
- Irssi is a terminal based IRC client for UNIX systems. It also supports SILC and ICB protocols via plugins.
- XChat is an IRC chat program for both Linux and Windows. It allows you to join multiple IRC channels (chat rooms) at the same time, talk publicly, private one-on-one conversations etc. Even file transfers are possible.
Discontinued
The program is no longer updated. Last version, 2.8.8, released in May 2010, can be still downloaded from the official website.
- WeeChat is a fast, light and extensible chat client. It runs on many platforms (including Linux, BSD and Mac OS).
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Linux
- Android
- BSD
- Xfce
- An IRC-like internet chatroom hosted on ZeroNet, a distributed network. 0rc is a fully distributed website, and messages are shared through peers using the ZeroNet stack. In addition, making a new chatroom website is a simple as downloading the files and cloning the site.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Self-Hosted
- Python
- JavaScript
- ZeroNet
Discontinued
Last update on github made over 5 years (March 13, 2016).