Pidgin is described as 'Chat program which lets you log into accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on XMPP and sitting in an IRC channel at the same time' and is a leading instant messenger in the social & communications category. There are more than 100 alternatives to Pidgin for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Mac, Windows, Web-based and Android apps. The best Pidgin alternative is Element. It's not free, so if you're looking for a free alternative, you could try Element or Matrix. Other great apps like Pidgin are Jami, Beeper, SeaMonkey and Element X.
Halloy is an open-source IRC client written in Rust, with the Iced GUI library. It aims to provide a simple and fast client for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms.
Kopete is an instant messenger supporting AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Novell GroupWise Messenger, and more. It is designed to be a flexible and extensible multi-protocol system suitable for personal and enterprise use.
Finch is a console-based IM program that lets you sign on to AIM, Jabber, MSN, IRC, Yahoo!, and other IM networks. It runs on Unixes. It uses GLib and ncurses.
Kaidan is a simple, user-friendly Jabber/XMPP client providing a modern user interface using Kirigami and QtQuick. The back-end of Kaidan is written in C++ using the QXmpp XMPP client library and Qt 5.
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.
jami-commander (jc for short) is a simple but convenient CLI-based Jami client app for setting up accounts and swarms as well as sending.
qutIM - free open-source multiprotocol ( ICQ, Jabber/GTalk/Ya.Online/LiveJournal.com, Mail.Ru, IRC )
BitlBee brings IM (instant messaging) to IRC clients. It's a great solution for people who have an IRC client running all the time and don't want to run an additional MSN/AIM/whatever client.
The project seems no longer developed since 2019. Last version, 2.6.6, released in October 2019, can be still downloaded from F-Droid, it's no longer available on Google Play Store
Only XMPP, while Pidgin works with multiple systems and protocols.
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...
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Modern interface for XMPP communications. Implements OMEMO:2. Works fine.