Messaging · Team chat · Video calls
Matrix (Synapse + Element)
Open, federated messaging you can host yourself.
open source self-hostable hosted in Europe Element (New Vector Ltd) · GBRun your own Matrix server with the Element apps: chats, rooms, calls, bridges to other networks; Element also hosts it in Europe.
Website ↗ Source ↗ Plan “Messaging” with itPlan “Team chat” with itPlan “Video calls” with it
How you can run it
| Way | Where the data lives | Price basis | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Host it myself | your own server or hardware | free | green — You run it yourself: no data leaves your own infrastructure. |
| Hosted in Europe | servers in Europe, run by a European company | ≈ €5/mo per seat | yellow — European company, European servers, but someone else runs it. |
Facts
| Company / project | Element (New Vector Ltd) (GB) |
|---|---|
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-hosting footprint | 1024 MB RAM · 1 vCPU · 10 GB — small deployment: a household or a team of up to ~20 people |
| Commonly replaces | WhatsApp, Slack, Discord |
| Upstream (awesome-selfhosted-data) | 4,569 stars · updated 2026-09-03 · Python, deb |
| Provenance | curated, verified 2026-09-04 |
Machine-readable: /api/tools/matrix-synapse.json. Something wrong? Tell us.