mIRC Alternatives
mIRC is described as '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' and is a popular IRC Client in the social & communications category. There are more than 50 alternatives to mIRC for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD and Online / Web-based. The best alternative is Pidgin, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like mIRC are HexChat, KVIrc, Quassel IRC and Empathy.
mIRC is mainly a IRC Client but alternatives to it may also be Instant Messengers or Video Calling Apps. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of mIRC.- 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.
HexChat vs mIRC opinions
Similar to Mirc but less complexOpen source, light and customizable, i recommend it - 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
KVIrc vs mIRC opinions
Good features, very stable and free, aside from mIRC there's nothing better out there.It's free, has certain nice extra features and a better scripting language. - Quassel IRC is a modern, cross-platform, distributed IRC client based on the Qt4 framework.
- 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.
Discontinued
Empathy is currently unmaintained. Last version, 3.25, released in August 2017, can be still downloaded from the official website.
- 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).