Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad



Matrix is described as 'Defines a set of open APIs for decentralised communication, suitable for securely publishing, persisting and subscribing to data over a global open federation of servers with no single point of control' and is a very popular instant messenger in the social & communications category. There are more than 100 alternatives to Matrix for a variety of platforms, including Android, Web-based, Linux, Mac and Windows apps. The best Matrix alternative is Signal, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Matrix are Telegram, Element, Discord and Pidgin.



Conduit is a simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix. Conduit is an alternative to Synapse and tries to be lightweight and easy to install, but it is still in development.

Empathy is a messaging program which supports text, voice, video chat, and file transfers over many different protocols. You can tell it about your accounts on all those services and do all your chatting within one application.







Ripcord is a desktop chat client for group-centric services like Slack and Discord. It provides a traditional compact desktop interface designed for power users. It's not built on top of web browser technology: it responds quickly to input, sips gently from computer...


Prosody is a modern flexible communications server for Jabber/XMPP written in Lua. It aims to be easy to set up and configure, and light on resources. For developers it aims to be easy to extend and give a flexible system on which to rapidly develop added functionality, or...
2x your productivity with Struct, a brand-new real-time chat platform designed from the ground up around threads, feeds and AI.

TeleGuard is the data-secure messenger from Swisscows. TeleGuard encrypts every message and all telephone calls with encryption algorithm currently available: SALSA 20. TeleGuard servers are located in Switzerland, they are not subject to the data protection laws of the EU /...






Gitter is a chat and collaboration tool for developers and users. It's a place for developers to talk.


Kosmi is a free real time application and communication platform that offers voice, text and video calls along with games and applications such as SNES Party, NES Party, OpenArena, Poker, Virtual Cardtables, Synced YouTube and Cowatch Video.




-Efficient: A small memory footprint with better baseline performance than an out-of-the-box Synapse.