conduwuit vs gomuks
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted matrix & xmpp options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
conduwuit
Archived
Well-maintained fork of the Conduit Matrix homeserver
VS
gomuks
Terminal-based Matrix client written in Go
| Feature | conduwuit | gomuks |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 15 · At risk | 85 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Matrix & XMPP | Matrix & XMPP |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 25 | ★ 1,727 |
| First released | 2024 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Slack, Discord | Slack, Discord |
What are conduwuit and gomuks?
conduwuit
conduwuit is a community-maintained fork of Conduit, a Matrix homeserver written in Rust. It focuses on stability, performance, and adding features that upstream Conduit lacked.
- Faster than upstream Conduit
- Easy single-binary deploy
- Active maintenance
- Matrix federation
gomuks
gomuks is a terminal user interface client for the Matrix protocol. It supports end-to-end encryption and provides a keyboard-driven chat experience for people who prefer the command line.
- Terminal UI
- End-to-end encryption
- Keyboard-driven
- Single Go binary
conduwuit vs gomuks: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: conduwuit's repository is archived and no longer developed, while gomuks is actively maintained. Conduwuit is written in Rust, while gomuks is built with Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for conduwuit versus AGPL-3.0 for gomuks. Gomuks is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 256 MB for conduwuit. Gomuks is the more established project (first released 2018), while conduwuit arrived in 2024. Gomuks has the considerably larger community, at 1,727 GitHub stars versus 25. Conduwuit lists first-class Docker deployment; gomuks does not.
Why pick each one
Choose conduwuit if…
- More features than Conduit
- Good performance
Watch out for
- Relatively young project
- Smaller community
Choose gomuks if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Active community (1.7k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
Frequently asked questions
Is conduwuit or gomuks better?
Neither is universally better. gomuks has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are conduwuit and gomuks free and open-source?
Yes. conduwuit is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gomuks under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run conduwuit and gomuks with Docker?
conduwuit: yes. gomuks: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, conduwuit or gomuks?
gomuks has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for conduwuit. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.