ejabberd vs Dendrite
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted matrix & xmpp options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare ejabberd with
choose an app… Rocket.Chat Mattermost Zulip SimpleX Chat Tinode Element Web Let's Chat Berty Matterbridge The Lounge qTox Synapse Cinny WeeChat Ergo Converse.js irssi Openfire FluffyChat Quicksy Bridge Dino Nheko Tuwunel Conduit Nextcloud Talk ZNC Movim mautrix-whatsapp MongooseIM gomuks Profanity Toxic Convos IRC Syphon Element Call Dendrite Lite Delta Chat Element X Fractal Maubot Briar JSXC Hydrogen matrix-nio Continuwuity mautrix-signal CoyIM Gajim Session mautrix-discord Chatmail Chatmail Relay SchildiChat Ketesa Synapse Admin jabberd2 Mjolnir Snikket Construct Tigase XMPP Server Pantalaimon Sliding Sync Proxy matrix-appservice-slack Coqui Chat Synapse-MAS Wesh Network aioxmpp Poezio Slidge Sygnal Metronome IM matrix-corporal PeerTube Plugin LiveChat Commet go-sendxmpp Simple-Matrix-Bot-Lib Monocles Chat Openfire Pade Plugin Prose conduwuit Prosody
Compare Dendrite with
choose an app… Rocket.Chat Mattermost Zulip Tinode Element Web Spectrum Let's Chat Mumble Matterbridge The Lounge Synapse Cinny WeeChat Ergo Converse.js Revolt irssi Openfire FluffyChat Tox Dino Nheko Tuwunel Conduit Spacebar Nextcloud Talk ZNC Movim mautrix-whatsapp MongooseIM gomuks Profanity InspIRCd Convos IRC Syphon Element Call KiwiIRC Dendrite Lite Bonfire Element X Fractal Maubot Mumble Web JSXC Hydrogen matrix-nio Continuwuity mautrix-signal CoyIM Gajim Miaou mautrix-discord SchildiChat Ketesa Synapse Admin jabberd2 Mjolnir Construct Tigase XMPP Server Pantalaimon Sliding Sync Proxy matrix-appservice-slack Coqui Chat Synapse-MAS aioxmpp Poezio Slidge Sygnal Metronome IM matrix-corporal PeerTube Plugin LiveChat Commet go-sendxmpp Simple-Matrix-Bot-Lib Monocles Chat Openfire Pade Plugin Prose conduwuit Prosody
Feature ejabberd Dendrite Category Matrix & XMPP Matrix & XMPP License GPL-2.0 Apache-2.0 Language Erlang Go Setup difficulty Hard Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal docker, binary, source GitHub stars ★ 6,711 ★ 5,632 First released 2002 2017 Replaces Slack, WhatsApp Slack, Discord
Why pick each one
Choose ejabberd if… Extremely scalable Battle-tested Standards-based ejabberd details Choose Dendrite if… Much lighter than Synapse Active development by Matrix.org Dendrite details
Frequently asked questions Is ejabberd or Dendrite better? Neither is universally better. ejabberd has the larger community, while Dendrite is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are ejabberd and Dendrite free and open-source? Yes. ejabberd is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Dendrite under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run ejabberd and Dendrite with Docker? ejabberd: yes. Dendrite: yes.