Built something? We create video reels & spotlights for GitHub projects.Promote your project →
Home / Alternatives / Slack
Open Source Alternative Guide

Best Open Source Alternatives to Slack

Looking for a free, self-hosted, and privacy-first replacement for Slack? These community-verified open source projects replace team messaging & communication suite without recurring per-seat fees or cloud vendor lock-in.

Proprietary Pricing: $8.75–$15/user/month
Open Source Cost: $0 (Self-Hosted)
Tracked Stars: ★ 58.6K
Alternative Projects: 17 verified repos

Why Engineering Teams Are Replacing Slack

✓ Zero Subscription Invoices

Deploy across 5 or 5,000 developers with zero incremental per-seat charges or usage surcharges.

✓ Full Data Sovereignty

No third-party cloud data scanning, closed training, or overseas data transfer compliance risks.

✓ Code Ownership

Inspect the architecture, add internal integrations, build custom plugins, and never worry about discontinued features.

Top Rated Slack Alternatives (17)

Ranked by verified GitHub stars & growth
orangecoding
#6 TRENDING orangecoding/fredy JavaScript 2018

❤️ Fredy - [F]ind [R]eal [E]state [D]amn Eas[y] - Fredy keeps searching for new apartments, houses, and flats in Europe on platforms like ImmoScout24, Immowelt, eBay Kleinanzeigen and instantly delivers the results to you via Slack, Telegram, Email, Discord or ntfy, so you can focus on the more important things in life ;)

236 ↑ +1 today
supermemoryai
#9 TRENDING supermemoryai/company-brain TypeScript NEW 2026

Open-sourcing our company brain - A teammate in your Slack that remembers everything your team says, and can go do the work.

100 ↑ +96 today
guanguans
#10 TRENDING guanguans/notify PHP 2021

Push notification SDK(AnPush、Bark、Chanify、DingTalk、Discord、Gitter、GoogleChat、IGot、Lark、Mattermost、MicrosoftTeams、NowPush、Ntfy、Push、Pushback、PushBullet、PushDeer、PushMe、Pushover、PushPlus、QQ、RocketChat、ServerChan、ShowdocPush、SimplePush、Slack、Telegram、WeWork、WPush、XiZhi、YiFengChuanHua、ZohoCliq、Zulip).

43 ↑ +1 today

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most popular open source alternative to Slack?

The leading open source project in this space is zulip/zulip with over 25,951 GitHub stars. It provides active developer community support, extensive documentation, and transparent licensing.

Are these open source alternatives free to use in commercial teams?

Yes. The vast majority of these repositories are licensed under permissive open-source licenses such as MIT, Apache 2.0, or AGPL, allowing developers to deploy and self-host them within commercial companies with zero subscription costs.

How do I deploy and self-host these alternatives?

Most top alternatives provide pre-built Docker containers and Docker Compose templates, enabling 1-command deployment onto a private VPS (Hostinger, DigitalOcean, Hetzner) or enterprise Kubernetes clusters.

From our network
FOR MAINTAINERS

Built something? Put it in front of millions of developers.

We make a short reel about your project and post it across YouTube, Instagram, Threads, and X. Send a link, we do the rest.