Centrifugo vs Toxic
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted chat & communication options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Centrifugo with
choose an app… Plane Chatwoot Focalboard Super Productivity Wekan SimpleX Chat Etherpad OpenProject Habitica Self-Hosted Planka Leantime Screego Typebot git-bug Kanboard Berty Mumble Kaneo The Lounge Papercups Taskwarrior Zammad WorkAdventure Soketi Remark42 Mercure Isso FreeSWITCH qTox MiroTalk Ferdium FreeScout Telegram Bot API Server Rustpad Asterisk WeeChat Ergo irssi Quicksy Bridge Kamailio Cusdis Tox Stoat AnyCable Chitchatter Live Helper Chat Spacebar Nextcloud Talk Indico RetroShare SIPCAPTURE Homer Peer-calls mautrix-telegram Routr GlobaLeaks openSIPS mautrix Databag Galène InspIRCd Candy Hyphanet FusionPBX soju KiwiIRC Glowing Bear Bonfire Pretalx Delta Chat Notifo SimpleX Briar Quassel IRC OTS matrix-commander Mumble Web Comentario BitlBee ngIRCd Miaou Session Nextcloud Talk Signaling Server UnrealIRCd MiroTalk C2C matrix-appservice-irc Linphone Chatmail Relay Hookshot Atheme IRC Services Maunium Sticker Picker Spectrum 2 Shhh Gamja Jami Server Bridge Mollysocket Anope PushBits Comm Heisenbridge Slixmpp Ferdium Server Solanum Wesh Network Draupnir baibot matrix-media-repo Charybdis IRCd Zusam Cactus Comments ircd-hybrid Scuttlebutt Room Robust IRC Flexisip SAMA Biboumi Hebbot ircu2 Libervia Jami YunoHost Mail Relay 3CX ARN-Messager Freepbx GNUnet Groupboard MailBag Mailman3 Mailing List Manager Mlmmj Web Peachpub PrivMX WebMail SIP3 TrueConf Wazo Yeti-Switch
Compare Toxic with
choose an app… Chatwoot SimpleX Chat Etherpad Tinode Screego Typebot Berty Mumble ejabberd The Lounge Papercups qTox Synapse FluffyChat Quicksy Bridge Tox Dino Peer-calls MongooseIM Syphon Delta Chat Element X Briar CoyIM Spark IM Gajim Session Linphone Chatmail Chatmail Relay SchildiChat Jangouts Snikket Jami Server Bridge Tigase XMPP Server Wesh Network Metronome IM Jami
Feature Centrifugo Toxic Category Chat & Communication Chat & Communication License MIT GPL-3.0 Language Go C Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 256 MB 64 MB Deployment docker, kubernetes, binary bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 10,590 ★ 1,301 First released 2015 2014 Replaces Pusher, Firebase Realtime Database Skype, WhatsApp
Why pick each one
Choose Toxic if… Released under the GPL-3.0 license Active community (1.3k GitHub stars) Written in C Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM Toxic details
Frequently asked questions Is Centrifugo or Toxic better? Neither is universally better. Centrifugo has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Centrifugo and Toxic free and open-source? Yes. Centrifugo is licensed under MIT and Toxic under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Centrifugo and Toxic with Docker? Centrifugo: yes. Toxic: check the project docs for container support.