SHSelfHostIndex

BigBlueButton vs Jitsi Videobridge

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted video conferencing options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
BI BigBlueButton Virtual classroom and web conferencing for education VS JI Jitsi Videobridge Scalable WebRTC-compatible video routing engine
FeatureBigBlueButtonJitsi Videobridge
CategoryVideo ConferencingVideo Conferencing
LicenseLGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageJavaScriptKotlin
Setup difficultyHardHard
Min. RAM8,192 MB512 MB
Deploymentbare-metal, sourcedocker, bare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 9,182★ 3,093
First released20092013
ReplacesZoom, Microsoft TeamsZoom, Twilio

Why pick each one

Choose BigBlueButton if…

  • Rich classroom features
  • Integrates with LMS platforms
BigBlueButton details

Choose Jitsi Videobridge if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (3.1k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Kotlin
Jitsi Videobridge details

Frequently asked questions

Is BigBlueButton or Jitsi Videobridge better?

Neither is universally better. BigBlueButton has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are BigBlueButton and Jitsi Videobridge free and open-source?

Yes. BigBlueButton is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and Jitsi Videobridge under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run BigBlueButton and Jitsi Videobridge with Docker?

BigBlueButton: check the project docs for container support. Jitsi Videobridge: yes.

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