ejabberd vs Openfire
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 Dendrite qTox Synapse Cinny WeeChat Ergo Converse.js irssi 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 Openfire with
choose an app… Rocket.Chat Mattermost Zulip Tinode Element Web Let's Chat BigBlueButton Matterbridge The Lounge Dendrite Synapse Cinny WeeChat Ergo Converse.js irssi FluffyChat Dino Nheko Tuwunel La Suite - Meet Conduit Nextcloud Talk ZNC Movim Twake Workplace mautrix-whatsapp MongooseIM gomuks Profanity Convos IRC Syphon Element Call Dendrite Lite Element X Fractal Maubot JSXC Hydrogen matrix-nio Continuwuity mautrix-signal CoyIM Gajim 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 Openfire Category Matrix & XMPP Matrix & XMPP License GPL-2.0 Apache-2.0 Language Erlang Java Setup difficulty Hard Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal docker, bare-metal, binary GitHub stars ★ 6,711 ★ 3,052 First released 2002 2004 Replaces Slack, WhatsApp Slack, Microsoft Teams
Why pick each one
Choose ejabberd if… Extremely scalable Battle-tested Standards-based ejabberd details
Frequently asked questions Is ejabberd or Openfire better? Neither is universally better. ejabberd has the larger community, while Openfire is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are ejabberd and Openfire free and open-source? Yes. ejabberd is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Openfire under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run ejabberd and Openfire with Docker? ejabberd: yes. Openfire: yes.