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irssi

Modular terminal IRC client with scripting

Chat & Communication ★ 3.2k stars Medium setup GPL-2.0

irssi is a terminal-based IRC client known for its stability, scripting support, and clean interface. It can be combined with screen or tmux to act as a long-running session.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Terminal interface
  • Perl scripting
  • Themeable display
  • Long-running stability

Strengths

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Active community (3.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 32 MB RAM

Is irssi secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect irssi's latest release (1.4.5). OSV.dev lists 34 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2023-29132, published 2023-04-14 (1279 days ago), fixed in 1.4.4

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

irssi replaces

Self-hosted Slack alternatives

Health badge

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SelfHostIndex: 75 · good

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   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for irssi
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The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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