ejabberd vs ZNC
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 Openfire FluffyChat Quicksy Bridge Dino Nheko Tuwunel Conduit Nextcloud Talk 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 ZNC with
choose an app… Tinode Element Web The Lounge Dendrite Synapse Cinny Converse.js Openfire FluffyChat Dino Nheko Tuwunel Conduit Movim mautrix-whatsapp MongooseIM gomuks Profanity Convos IRC Syphon soju Element Call Glowing Bear Dendrite Lite Element X Fractal Maubot Gamja
Feature ejabberd ZNC Category Matrix & XMPP Matrix & XMPP License GPL-2.0 Apache-2.0 Language Erlang C++ Setup difficulty Hard Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 64 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 6,711 ★ 2,123 First released 2002 2004 Replaces Slack, WhatsApp IRCCloud
Why pick each one
Choose ejabberd if… Extremely scalable Battle-tested Standards-based ejabberd details Choose ZNC if… Very stable and mature Highly configurable ZNC details
Frequently asked questions Is ejabberd or ZNC better? Neither is universally better. ejabberd has the larger community, while ZNC is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are ejabberd and ZNC free and open-source? Yes. ejabberd is licensed under GPL-2.0 and ZNC under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run ejabberd and ZNC with Docker? ejabberd: yes. ZNC: yes.