ejabberd vs The Lounge

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureejabberdThe Lounge
CategoryMatrix & XMPPChat & Communication
LicenseGPL-2.0MIT
LanguageErlangTypeScript
Setup difficultyHardEasy
Min. RAM512 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 6,711★ 6,309
First released20022014
ReplacesSlack, WhatsAppIRCCloud, Slack

Why pick each one

Choose ejabberd if…

  • Extremely scalable
  • Battle-tested
  • Standards-based
ejabberd details

Choose The Lounge if…

  • Great IRC experience in the browser
  • Multi-user support
The Lounge details

Frequently asked questions

Is ejabberd or The Lounge better?

Neither is universally better. ejabberd has the larger community, while The Lounge is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are ejabberd and The Lounge free and open-source?

Yes. ejabberd is licensed under GPL-2.0 and The Lounge under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run ejabberd and The Lounge with Docker?

ejabberd: yes. The Lounge: yes.

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