Mumble vs The Lounge

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted chat & communication options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureMumbleThe Lounge
CategoryChat & CommunicationChat & Communication
LicenseBSD-3-ClauseMIT
LanguageC++TypeScript
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 8,175★ 6,309
First released20052014
ReplacesDiscord, TeamSpeak, VentriloIRCCloud, Slack

Why pick each one

Choose Mumble if…

  • Excellent voice quality
  • Tiny resource footprint
Mumble details

Choose The Lounge if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is Mumble or The Lounge better?

Neither is universally better. Mumble has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Mumble and The Lounge free and open-source?

Yes. Mumble is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and The Lounge under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Mumble and The Lounge with Docker?

Mumble: yes. The Lounge: yes.

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