conduwuit vs Dendrite
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
Dendrite
Archived
Second-generation Matrix homeserver written in Go
| Feature | conduwuit | Dendrite |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 15 · At risk | 15 · At risk |
| Status | Archived | Archived |
| Category | Matrix & XMPP | Matrix & XMPP |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 25 | ★ 5,625 |
| First released | 2024 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Slack, Discord | Slack, Discord |
What are conduwuit and Dendrite?
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
Dendrite
Dendrite is a lightweight, efficient Matrix homeserver written in Go by the Matrix.org team. It is designed to be a more resource-efficient alternative to Synapse while remaining fully compatible with the Matrix protocol.
- Lower memory footprint than Synapse
- Federated Matrix protocol
- End-to-end encryption support
- Polylith and monolith deployment modes
conduwuit vs Dendrite: key differences
Note that both projects' repositories are archived — neither is actively developed. Conduwuit is written in Rust, while Dendrite is built with Go. Conduwuit is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Dendrite. Dendrite is the more established project (first released 2017), while conduwuit arrived in 2024. Dendrite has the considerably larger community, at 5,625 GitHub stars versus 25.
Why pick each one
Choose conduwuit if…
- More features than Conduit
- Good performance
Watch out for
- Relatively young project
- Smaller community
Choose Dendrite if…
- Much lighter than Synapse
- Active development by Matrix.org
Watch out for
- Some Synapse features still missing
- Less battle-tested at large scale
Frequently asked questions
Is conduwuit or Dendrite better?
Neither is universally better. Dendrite has the larger community, while conduwuit is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are conduwuit and Dendrite free and open-source?
Yes. conduwuit is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Dendrite under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run conduwuit and Dendrite with Docker?
conduwuit: yes. Dendrite: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, conduwuit or Dendrite?
conduwuit has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Dendrite. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.