Papercups vs Robust IRC
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?
Compare Papercups with
choose an app… Plane Chatwoot Focalboard Super Productivity Wekan SimpleX Chat Etherpad OpenProject Habitica Self-Hosted Planka Leantime Centrifugo Screego Typebot git-bug Kanboard Berty Mumble Kaneo The Lounge Taskwarrior Zammad WorkAdventure Soketi Remark42 Isso FreeSWITCH qTox MiroTalk Ferdium FreeScout Telegram Bot API Server Rustpad Erxes Asterisk WeeChat Ergo irssi Quicksy Bridge Kamailio Cusdis Libredesk Tox Stoat AnyCable Chitchatter Live Helper Chat Spacebar Nextcloud Talk Indico RetroShare SIPCAPTURE Homer Peer-calls mautrix-telegram Routr GlobaLeaks openSIPS mautrix Databag Galène InspIRCd Candy Toxic Hyphanet FusionPBX soju KiwiIRC Glowing Bear Bonfire Pretalx Delta Chat Notifo SimpleX Briar Quassel IRC OTS matrix-commander Mumble Web Comentario BitlBee ngIRCd Miaou Session Nextcloud Talk Signaling Server UnrealIRCd MiroTalk C2C matrix-appservice-irc Linphone Chatmail Relay Hookshot Atheme IRC Services Maunium Sticker Picker Spectrum 2 Shhh Gamja Jami Server Bridge Mollysocket Anope PushBits Comm Tiledesk Heisenbridge Slixmpp Ferdium Server Solanum Wesh Network Draupnir baibot matrix-media-repo Charybdis IRCd Zusam Cactus Comments ircd-hybrid Scuttlebutt Room Flexisip SAMA Biboumi Hebbot ircu2 Libervia Jami YunoHost Mail Relay 3CX ARN-Messager Freepbx GNUnet Groupboard MailBag Mailman3 Mailing List Manager Mlmmj Web Peachpub PrivMX WebMail SIP3 TrueConf Wazo Yeti-Switch
Compare Robust IRC with
choose an app… Chatwoot SimpleX Chat Etherpad Centrifugo Screego Typebot Berty Mumble The Lounge
Feature Papercups Robust IRC Category Chat & Communication Chat & Communication License MIT BSD-3-Clause Language Elixir Go Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 1,024 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 6,097 ★ 195 First released 2020 2020 Replaces Intercom, Drift —
Why pick each one
Choose Papercups if… Released under the MIT license First-class Docker support for quick deployment Mature project with 6.1k GitHub stars Written in Elixir Papercups details Choose Robust IRC if… Released under the BSD-3-Clause license Written in Go Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM Robust IRC details
Frequently asked questions Is Papercups or Robust IRC better? Neither is universally better. Papercups has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Papercups and Robust IRC free and open-source? Yes. Papercups is licensed under MIT and Robust IRC under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Papercups and Robust IRC with Docker? Papercups: yes. Robust IRC: check the project docs for container support.