Open source alternatives to Zoom

What Zoom does

Zoom Meetings, part of the Zoom Workplace suite, is a hosted video conferencing service with desktop and mobile apps and a web client. Around meetings it offers breakout rooms, polls, a whiteboard, webinars, phone dial-in, cloud recording and Zoom Rooms hardware for meeting rooms, and its AI Companion produces meeting summaries and answers questions about a meeting. Plans run from the free Basic tier through Pro, Business and Enterprise. Meetings can optionally use end-to-end encryption for up to 1,000 participants, including a post-quantum variant.

Why people look for an alternative

• Data handled by a third party. Meeting media is processed in Zoom’s data centers. Paid accounts can choose which regions handle real-time meeting content, but free accounts are tied to the region where the account was set up, and Zoom notes that data may still pass through data centers an account has opted out of.
• Time limit on the free plan. Basic meetings are limited to 40 minutes and 100 participants, and recording is local only; cloud recording starts with Pro.
• Trade-offs with end-to-end encryption. Turning on E2EE disables cloud recording, AI features, live streaming, live transcription, polls, Zoom Apps, Whiteboard and Notes, and phone and SIP/H.323 participants cannot join. Free users must verify a phone number by SMS before using it.
• Past security claims. In November 2020 the US Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Zoom over allegations that it advertised “end-to-end, 256-bit encryption” while holding keys that could give it access to meeting content. The order required a comprehensive security program and independent assessments.
• Lock-in. Zoom is a proprietary client and service. Organizations that must run meetings on their own servers, or want to embed meetings in their own products under an open license, cannot do that with it.

What to compare in an alternative

1. Meeting style. Everyday team calls, presenter-led classes and webinars, or calls embedded in another product.
2. Encryption. Whether the tool offers end-to-end encryption, in which browsers, and which features it switches off.
3. Self-hosting effort. The number of services to run, hardware and bandwidth needs, and how capacity grows with more meetings.
4. The Zoom features you use. Breakout rooms, polls, whiteboard, recording, live streaming, phone dial-in, mobile apps and LMS integrations.
5. Access control. Who can create rooms, lobbies and passwords, and login through OIDC, SAML or LDAP.
6. Editions and licenses. Whether scaling or support requires a proprietary edition or a commercial license.

Which one to choose

For general meetings, Jitsi Meet is the closest match: link-based meetings, mobile apps, breakout rooms, optional end-to-end encryption, recording and phone dial-in, with a public instance to try first. La Suite Meet is an MIT-licensed LiveKit app from the French government aimed at large meetings, best for organizations with an OIDC identity provider. MiroTalk SFU gives many features in a single Node.js app, and Galene runs lectures and meetings on very little hardware.

For teaching and webinars, BigBlueButton has the most complete classroom toolset, with slides, whiteboard, polls, breakout rooms and recorded playback. plugNmeet offers similar tools and plugins for WordPress and Moodle, eduMEET fits university identity federations, and Apache OpenMeetings adds file drives and a calendar. To embed meetings in your own product, look at OpenVidu, keeping in mind that scaling beyond one server needs its proprietary PRO edition.