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Profanity

Console-based XMPP client inspired by irssi

Matrix & XMPP ★ 1.5k stars Medium setup GPL-3.0

Profanity is a console XMPP client whose interface is inspired by irssi. It supports OMEMO and OTR encryption, group chats, and a fully keyboard-driven workflow for the terminal.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Terminal interface
  • OMEMO and OTR encryption
  • Keyboard-driven workflow
  • Plugin support

Strengths

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Active community (1.5k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 32 MB RAM

Is Profanity secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect Profanity's latest release (0.18.2). OSV.dev lists 1 past advisory 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-2017-5592, published 2017-02-09 (3534 days ago)

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

Profanity replaces

Self-hosted Slack alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Profanity? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 87 · excellent

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[![SelfHostIndex health score for Profanity](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/profanity-xmpp.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/profanity-xmpp/)
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.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/profanity-xmpp.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Profanity
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/profanity-xmpp/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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