Self-hosted alternatives to Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams: Jitsi Meet and BigBlueButton compared

The short answer

For ordinary video meetings, pick Jitsi Meet. It ran on a 2 vCPU server next to nothing else, held a meeting of 24 people with video, and has a lobby, passwords, screen sharing, chat, moderator controls and end-to-end encryption, all free under the Apache 2.0 licence. Guests join from a link in the browser, with nothing to install. Pick BigBlueButton for teaching: whiteboard, shared notes, polls, breakout rooms and recordings are built in. It needs a server of its own, with Ubuntu, 8 CPU cores and 16 GB of memory, and we could not install it on our test server.

Neither has phone numbers to dial in to, or AI meeting notes, out of the box.

What we tested

We installed Jitsi Meet on a fresh Melonslab VC-P Alloy (2 vCPU, 8 GB) with Debian 13 by following our Jitsi Meet guide step by step, with only our users allowed to start meetings. Then we held meetings from headless Chromium browsers with a test camera and microphone, as a moderator, Anna, and guests:

• meetings of 2, 4, 8, 16 and 24 participants, each sending video, while we measured the server's processor, memory and network for a minute;
• screen sharing, chat, the lobby, a meeting password, end-to-end encryption, muting everyone and removing a participant;
• a meeting with UDP port 10000 blocked for the participants, so that it had to go through the TURN server;
• the Swedish interface;
• everything the server and the browsers connected to, captured while the services started and three meetings ran.

BigBlueButton was not installed by us. Its documentation asks for a dedicated server with Ubuntu 22.04, 8 CPU cores and 16 GB of memory, and our servers offer neither Ubuntu 22.04 nor that size on the test plan. Everything this page says about BigBlueButton comes from its own documentation, read on 14 October 2026, and is marked as such.

Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams were not tested. We did not sign up for any of them. What this page says about them comes from their own pages, linked where we use them and read on 14 October 2026.

We left out Element Call, the calls in Matrix. Our Matrix calls guide sets it up, but it needs a whole Matrix server first, and everyone in a call needs a Matrix account. It is a call feature of a chat service, not a meeting tool where outside guests join from a link. If your team already uses Matrix, see Mattermost or Matrix.

The numbers

Memory is the sum of Jitsi's services, as systemd counts it, measured at rest right after the guide's last step. The install time is from the first command in our guide to the last, run as a script, most of it downloading packages.

How many people one server holds

We measured each meeting for 60 seconds, after everyone had joined and 30 seconds had passed. All participants sent video and sound, and every participant's browser showed every other participant's video.

What this means:

• The videobridge does the work. Prosody, Jicofo, nginx and coturn stayed at 1 to 3 % of a core throughout.
• Each participant cost about 60 MB of memory and 2 Mbit/s out of the server at 8 people and above. The videobridge is a Java program and keeps memory it has taken: after the meetings, Jitsi stayed at about 570 MB at rest.
• A 2 vCPU server is full at about 25 people with video in one meeting. We stopped at 24, with the server at 84 %.
• Two people talk directly. With Jitsi's defaults, a meeting of two goes straight between the two browsers when they can reach each other, and the server carries nothing. For the table above we switched that off, so that every meeting went through the server.

Our test video was Chromium's built-in test picture, sent from one computer. A real camera in a lit room sends more, so expect more bandwidth per person than we measured, and test with your own people before a big meeting. At our rate, a 24-person meeting is about 23 GB of traffic an hour; a VC-P Alloy includes 10 TB a month.

Setup

Jitsi Meet installs from Jitsi's own Debian package repository with one apt install, which took 76 seconds on our server, and gets its certificate from Let's Encrypt by itself. Our guide then turns on the secure domain, so only accounts you create can start meetings, and switches off a STUN server run by Jitsi and pictures from Gravatar. It runs as ordinary system services, not in containers, and takes ports 80 and 443 for its own nginx, so it needs a server of its own, without Caddy or another web server.

BigBlueButton installs with a script, bbb-install.sh, on "a 'clean' and dedicated Ubuntu 22.04 64-bit server with no prior software installed", according to its install page. By dedicated, it means "this server won't be used for anything else besides BigBlueButton", apart from its Greenlight front end. TCP ports 80 and 443 must "not be in use by another web server or reverse proxy". The page asks for:

• Ubuntu 22.04, 64-bit, with a 5.x kernel;
• 8 CPU cores "with high single-thread performance" and 16 GB of memory with swap;
• 500 GB of disk for recordings, or 50 GB without them;
• 250 Mbit/s of bandwidth in both directions, and both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address.

Melonslab offers Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04, not 22.04, so BigBlueButton 3.0 cannot be installed on our server images as it stands. Version 4.0, a release candidate when we checked, "installs on Ubuntu 24.04 64-bit" according to its release notes, with the same hardware requirements. There is a set of Docker files, bigbluebutton/docker, but it calls itself "community maintained", needs root Docker with host networking, was at version 3.0.23, and lists LiveKit, the media server of 4.0, as missing. We did not try it.

Meetings day to day

Everything here is what we saw in Jitsi Meet.

• Joining. A guest opens the link, types a name and chooses Join meeting. Before a user with an account has started the meeting, the guest sees Waiting for a moderator…. Anna chose Log-in, entered her account, and the meeting started with her as moderator. A wrong password gave "Incorrect username or password".
• Screen sharing. Start sharing your screen sent the guest's screen to the others as a second video, next to the camera.
• Chat. A message from the guest, "Hej från Bo", showed up in Anna's chat. Jitsi does not keep the chat after the meeting.
• Other tools. The More actions menu had polls, sharing a video, backgrounds and extra noise suppression, and the participants panel had Add breakout room. We did not test those.

BigBlueButton, according to its feature pages, is built for classes: a multi-user whiteboard, shared notes, polls and quizzes, breakout rooms with their own whiteboards, chat with replies and reactions, and a "Learning Analytics Dashboard" for the moderator. Its Greenlight front end gives people rooms with fixed addresses and accounts.

Lobby, passwords and who can start a meeting

In Jitsi, Security options in the More actions menu has three switches, and we tested all three:

• Enable lobby. A guest who joined then saw "Asking to join meeting…", and Anna got "Wants to join the meeting" with Admit and Reject. After Admit, the guest was in.
• Add password. A new guest got "Password required". A wrong password left them at the prompt; the right one let them in.
• Enable End-to-End Encryption, below.

Who may start a meeting is set on the server. Our guide uses Jitsi's secure domain: accounts in Prosody that you make with prosodyctl, and everyone else waits for one of them. Jitsi's documentation now says of it: "This method of authentication is deprecated and should not be used in new installations." It recommends signed tokens (JWT) instead, made by a login service or a web app of your own, which suits you if meetings are started from an intranet or a booking system. The secure domain worked on the current release.

BigBlueButton has no login of its own: meetings are created through its API, with a shared secret, by a front end such as Greenlight or an LMS like Moodle. Greenlight has accounts, and "offers external authentication support through OpenID Connect", for example through Keycloak (docs). Its guest policy can be ALWAYS_ACCEPT, the default, ALWAYS_DENY or ASK_MODERATOR, which gives a waiting room where "the HTML5 client shows each guest their position in the waiting queue" (docs).

Moderator controls

As moderator, Anna had Mute all, which asks "Mute everyone?" and can let people unmute themselves or not. The guest's microphone was muted. For each participant, the menu had Ask to unmute, Mute everyone else, Disable camera of everyone else, Stop screen-sharing for everyone else, Grant Moderator Rights, Kick out, Pin to stage and Send private message. After Kick out, the guest saw "Ouch! Anna kicked you out of the meeting".

BigBlueButton's lock settings, according to its documentation, let the moderator turn off people's camera, microphone and public chat, among other things.

Recording

Jitsi Meet records meetings on the server with Jibri, which our guide does not install. Jibri runs a real Chrome browser that joins the meeting and records the screen with ffmpeg. According to its README, "Only one recording at a time is supported on a single jibri", and it "is intended to be run on a separate machine (or a VM), with no other applications using the display or audio devices". It needs the ALSA loopback sound module and was built on Ubuntu. In practice that is one more server per meeting you want to record at the same time. Without Jibri, the Record button offers Local recording, which records in the moderator's own browser; in our headless browser it gave "Recording failed to start", so we cannot say how well it works.

BigBlueButton records on its own server, which is why it asks for 500 GB of disk. After a meeting, it "processes the recorded events and media to create a playback option", by default in its "presentation" format with slides, whiteboard, chat and sound, according to its FAQ and customisation page. We did not see it.

Phone dial-in

Neither has phone numbers of its own; you bring a SIP provider. We tested neither.

• Jitsi dials in and out through Jigasi, a SIP gateway, according to its Docker guide. It is audio only, needs an account with a SIP provider and a phone number, and stops working in meetings with end-to-end encryption.
• BigBlueButton has FreeSWITCH built in; "you need to first obtain a phone number from a Internet Telephone Service Provider" and add it to FreeSWITCH, according to its customisation page.

Our guides on Asterisk and FreePBX cover a phone system of your own.

End-to-end encryption

Every Jitsi meeting is encrypted between each browser and the server, but the videobridge decrypts the media to pass it on. With Enable End-to-End Encryption, the browsers encrypt it with keys only the participants have. We switched it on in a meeting with Anna and two guests: Jitsi reported it on for both, and every video still played. Jitsi itself warns that it "is currently EXPERIMENTAL", turns off "server-side provided services such as: phone participation", and "will only work for people joining from browsers with support for insertable streams".

BigBlueButton's FAQ says "the media packets are encrypted using the Secure Real-Time Protocol", between the browser and the server. We found nothing in its documentation about end-to-end encryption.

Swedish

Jitsi Meet has a Swedish interface, with 93 % of its texts translated in this release. It picks the language from the browser: a browser with Swedish among its languages showed "Anslut till mötet" and "Din mikrofon fungerar". One set only to sv-SE, without plain sv, showed English; most browsers set to Swedish send both. Each person can also choose Svenska under Settings > General > Language.

BigBlueButton is "localized into over 50 languages", according to its FAQ, and has a Swedish translation file, sv_SE.json, in the source code of 3.0.39. We did not see it.

Mobile apps

Jitsi Meet has official apps for iOS and Android, on the App Store, Google Play and F-Droid (jitsi.org). Their settings have a Server URL field for your own server. We did not test them on a phone.

BigBlueButton has no app to install: it "runs within the default Chrome browser (no app to install) on Android 6.0+" and in Safari on iOS 12.2 and later, according to its FAQ.

What they contact

After step 6 of our guide, the Jitsi server made no connection of its own while its services started and while we held three meetings: no DNS lookup, no outgoing connection. The meeting page loaded nothing from other sites. The only outside services left are Jitsi's package repository for updates and Let's Encrypt for the certificate, through the acme.sh cron job the installer adds.

BigBlueButton, as its 3.0.39 source code ships, gives browsers and FreeSWITCH Google's STUN server, stun.l.google.com, to find their public addresses. We read that in the code, not in its documentation, and you can change it. The install script also gets a certificate from Let's Encrypt and pulls Greenlight from Docker Hub.

Ports and strict networks

Jitsi carries sound and video on UDP port 10000. Networks that block it, such as some company and hotel networks, get through coturn on UDP 3478 or TLS on TCP 5349, which our guide sets up. We blocked UDP 10000 for our participants: a meeting of three still worked, and coturn's processor use went from 1 % to 11 % as it relayed the media.

BigBlueButton uses UDP 16384–32768. Its documentation recommends a TURN server "if your server is on the Internet and you have users accessing it from behind restrictive firewalls". The install script puts coturn on port 443 of the same server, or uses one on a separate server, which "cannot have any dashboard software or other web applications running" (docs).

Updates and backups

Jitsi updates with apt upgrade from its package repository. The automatic updates in our guide install Debian's packages, not Jitsi's own: you update those yourself when nobody is in a meeting, as the services restart. Jitsi keeps no meetings, chat or recordings: what there is to back up is its settings in /etc/jitsi and /etc/prosody and the accounts in /var/lib/prosody. Our guide has no backup step.

BigBlueButton updates when "you … re-run the same bbb-install.sh command used for installation", according to bbb-install. Version 3.0 got four patch releases between 31 August and 2 October 2026. Its recordings and Greenlight's database are what you back up.

Licence and cost

We read the licences and pricing pages on 14 October 2026.

• Jitsi Meet is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence, and so are the videobridge, Jicofo and Jibri. It is made by 8x8, a US company, with its community. There is no paid edition to run yourself; 8x8 sells a hosted version, JaaS, which the installer offers and our guide declines.
• BigBlueButton is open source under the LGPL 3.0, and so is Greenlight. "BigBlueButton and the BigBlueButton logo are trademarks of BigBlueButton Inc." Blindside Networks, "the company behind BigBlueButton", sells hosting with "value-added capabilities" that "may not be available in self-hosted installations" (about).

Both are free to run for as many people as your server holds. The cost is the server: a VC-P Alloy for Jitsi, and for BigBlueButton a server with 8 vCPU and at least 16 GB, such as a VC-P Tungsten, once it runs on an Ubuntu we offer.

Zoom, Google Meet and Teams today

What follows is from their own pages, read on 14 October 2026, not from our tests. Prices are per user a month, without VAT.

Zoom. Its pricing page lists Basic, free, with "40 minutes per meeting" and 100 participants; Pro at 147.49 kronor, billed yearly, with "30 hours per meeting" and 100 participants; and Business at 190.66 kronor with 300. Pro and Business include 10 GB of cloud recording per licence. Unlimited AI note-taking and meeting summaries come with Pro. Dial-in numbers are sold as an Audio Conferencing add-on. Zoom's end-to-end encryption works on free accounts too, but turns off cloud recording, the AI features, phone dial-in, polls and more (Zoom). Paid accounts can choose which regions carry their meetings, but "the United States data center cannot be disabled" (Zoom).

Google Meet. Free accounts get "Meetings with 3 or more participants for up to 60 minutes" and up to 100 participants (Google). In Google Workspace, the Swedish pricing page showed Business Starter at 6.80 euros, Standard at 13.60 and Plus at 21.10, billed monthly, with 100, 150 and 500 participants. Recording starts at Business Standard. Dial-in numbers in Sweden come with supported editions (Google). Gemini's "Take notes for me" starts at Business Standard, and does not list Swedish among its languages. Client-side encryption, Google's end-to-end option, is only in Enterprise Plus and Education editions, and turns off recording, dial-in and the AI notes (Google).

Microsoft Teams. Teams Free has meetings of up to 60 minutes and 100 participants. Teams Essentials is 38.20 kronor, billed yearly, for up to 300 participants and 30 hours, with recording. Microsoft 365 Business Basic, with Teams, is 66.91 kronor. Audio conferencing is a free add-on for the Business plans. Teams Premium, at 95.60 kronor, adds the AI meeting recap. End-to-end encrypted meetings need it too, and turn off recording, dial-in and Copilot (Microsoft). Microsoft keeps EU customers' data in the EU under its EU Data Boundary.

What you give up compared with Zoom, Meet and Teams

On your own server, meetings go through a computer you rent in Sweden, nobody counts licences or minutes, and no free tier ends your meeting after 40 or 60 minutes. But be honest about what you leave behind:

• Scale. One VC-P Alloy held about 25 people with video in our test. Zoom, Meet and Teams take hundreds, and webinars of thousands. Jitsi can spread meetings over several videobridges, but that is a project of its own.
• A network near everyone. The big services connect each person to a server near them. With your own server, someone in Australia talks to Sweden and back.
• Phone numbers. Meet and Teams include dial-in numbers in Sweden with the right plans. Yourself, you need a SIP provider, a number, and Jigasi or FreeSWITCH.
• AI notes and transcripts. Zoom, Meet and Teams summarise meetings and write notes. Neither Jitsi nor BigBlueButton does that in our setup.
• Recording without effort. In Jitsi, recording means Jibri on a server of its own per meeting at a time.
• Calendar and apps. Zoom, Meet and Teams sit in Outlook and Google Calendar and in their own apps. With Jitsi, you paste a link.
• Running it. Updates, the certificate and the server are yours, and an update ends meetings in progress.

Which one to pick

Video meetings for a company or an association: Jitsi Meet. It installed in under three minutes, held 24 people with video on 2 vCPU, contacted nothing outside, and has a lobby, passwords, moderator controls, end-to-end encryption, Swedish and apps for phones, for free. Its weak points: it needs a server of its own, not shared with Caddy and other apps; recording needs Jibri on another server; the secure domain our guide uses is deprecated in favour of tokens; and updates end running meetings. Follow the Jitsi Meet guide, on a VC-P Alloy. For more than about 25 people with video in one meeting, take a larger server and test first.

Teaching, courses and recorded lectures: BigBlueButton, if you can give it what it asks for: a dedicated Ubuntu server with 8 cores and 16 GB, 500 GB of disk for recordings, and a TURN server. In return you get a whiteboard, shared notes, polls, breakout rooms, analytics and recordings built in. Its weak points: version 3.0 needs Ubuntu 22.04, which our server images do not offer; the large server it needs; no end-to-end encryption that we could find; and Google's STUN server in its defaults. We have no guide for it and did not test it. Once BigBlueButton 4.0 is released for Ubuntu 24.04, a VC-P Tungsten (8 vCPU, 32 GB) meets its requirements.

Calls inside a team that already chats in Matrix: Element Call, from our Matrix calls guide, rather than a separate meeting server.