Pidgin AlternativesOnly apps categorised as IRC Clients

The best IRC Client alternative to Pidgin is SeaMonkey, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Pidgin and many of them are IRC Clients so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting IRC Client alternatives to Pidgin are Empathy, WeeChat, Miranda NG and Instantbird.

filter to find the best alternatives

Pidgin alternatives are mainly IRC Clients, but if you're looking for Instant Messengers or Email Clients you can filter on that. Other popular filters include Android, Android + Free, Linux and iPhone. You can also filter by region, for example EU-based alternatives if you prefer software developed in the European Union. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to Pidgin.
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Alternatives list

  1. SeaMonkey icon
     241 likes
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    Web-browser, advanced e-mail, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing in one application. Itis built on the open source Mozilla Gecko engine, the same code which underlies Thunderbird and is the base for the Firefox browser.

    185 SeaMonkey alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • PortableApps.com
     
  2. Empathy icon
     157 likes
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    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.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
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    Comments about Empathy as an Alternative to Pidgin
    Guest
    Positive
    0

    Both free and open source and works in Linux Support many protocols

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Pidgin Icon
    Empathy icon
    • Almost everyone thinks Empathy is a great Pidgin alternative.

    • Empathy is Free and Open SourcePidgin is also Free and Open Source
  3. WeeChat icon
     38 likes
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    WeeChat is a free chat client, fast and light, designed for many operating systems. It is highly customizable and extensible with scripts.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Haiku
    • Xfce
     
  4. Miranda NG icon
     50 likes
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    Miranda New Generation is a successor of a popular multi-protocol instant messaging client for Windows - Miranda IM . Very light on system resources and extremely fast.

    22 Miranda NG alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • PortableApps.com
     
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    1
    7
    Comments about Miranda NG as an Alternative to Pidgin
    Mister Hutchinson
    Positive
    0

    One of few Windows chat clients supporting multiple protocols and plugins, while also being open-source.

    Pidgin Icon
    Miranda NG icon
    • Almost everyone thinks Miranda NG is a great Pidgin alternative.

    • Miranda NG is Free and Open SourcePidgin is also Free and Open Source
    • Miranda NG is CustomizablePidgin is not according to our users
  5. Instantbird icon
     42 likes
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    Instantbird is an instant messaging client based on Mozilla XULRunner and the open source library libpurple created by the software developers of Pidgin . Over 250 add-ons allow user customization of, and addition of, features.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • PortableApps.com
     
  6. Subway icon
     5 likes
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    Subway is a web-based IRC client with a multi-user backend and a JavaScript-heavy UI. Frontend/backend communication is done with websockets (or best available fallback where not available). The backend supports connection persistence and optional logging when the browser...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
     
  7. Kiwi IRC icon
     28 likes
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    A hand-crafted IRC client that you can enjoy. Designed to be used easily and freely. More friendly than other webirc clients giving the general public an easy option to connect to any IRC network.

    63 Kiwi IRC alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
    • Google Chrome
     
  8. Maid-IRC icon
     6 likes
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    A modern web IRC client. Built on Node.js.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
    • Node.JS
     
  9. Ayttm icon
     13 likes
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    Ayttm is an instant messaging (aka chat) client that provides all-in-one chat functionality for several major instant messaging services from one simple program. Ayttm "Contacts" allow you to refer to several accounts of the same person from a single contact name...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  10. Glowing Bear icon
     7 likes
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    Glowing Bear is a sleek, modern web frontend that securely connects to a running instance of WeeChat using its built-in relay protocol. It relies on WeeChat to do all the heavy lifting and then provides some nice features on top of that, like...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Self-Hosted
    • Google Chrome
    • WeeChat
     
  11. senpai icon
     2 likes
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    A modern terminal IRC client.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
     
  12. CoreIRC icon
     Like
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    IRC chat client and DCC file transfers.

    Cost / License

    • Freemium (Pay once)
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
    • Android
     
12 of 28 Pidgin alternatives