The alternatives
jitsi-meet
Jitsi Meet - Secure, Simple and Scalable Video Conferences that you use as a standalone app or embed in your web application.
jitsi/jitsi-meet Updated 2026-05-05 livekit
End-to-end realtime stack for connecting humans and AI
livekit/livekit Updated 2026-05-05 bigbluebutton
A complete web conferencing system for virtual classes and more!
bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton Updated 2026-05-05 Comparison notes
Jitsi Meet self-hosted covers basic video meetings with screen sharing and recording but struggles to scale beyond 10–15 simultaneous video participants without a properly configured Jitsi Video Bridge cluster running on dedicated infrastructure. LiveKit is a WebRTC-native media server designed for embedding real-time video into applications rather than replacing meeting software — it has no ready-made meeting UI comparable to Zoom's client experience. BigBlueButton is purpose-built for online education with whiteboard, polling, and breakout room features aligned to Zoom's educational use cases, but is not designed for general business meeting workflows.
Migration tips
- Deploy Jitsi Meet using the official Debian/Ubuntu installer script on a server with at least 4 CPU cores and 4GB RAM for small-scale deployments under 15 participants.
- Configure a Coturn TURN server separately to ensure connectivity for users behind strict NAT or corporate firewalls — this is the most common source of Jitsi connection failures.
- For webinar-scale use, BigBlueButton's Scalelite load balancer distributes load across multiple BBB servers, but requires more infrastructure coordination than Zoom's fully managed auto-scaling.
FAQ
Can I fully replace Zoom with an OSS tool?
Feature parity varies. Most OSS alternatives cover 70-90% of core workflows, but may lack polish, integrations, or specialized features. Pilot the alternative with a subset of your team before fully committing.
What's the cost of self-hosting?
Plan for ~$5-50/month in VPS costs (DigitalOcean, Hetzner, etc.) plus 2-8 hours/month in maintenance. For a team of 20+, self-hosting usually breaks even against SaaS pricing within 6-12 months.
Which alternative should I pick?
Sort by GitHub stars (a proxy for community health), check the last-pushed date (avoid unmaintained projects), and read recent issues to gauge responsiveness.