Open Source Alternatives
Open Source Video Conferencing Alternatives to Zoom
Video conferencing and online meeting platform.
Zoom is a trademark of its respective owner.
Updated May 2026
What you gain
- ✓No per-host pricing starting at $13.33-21.99/host/mo
- ✓Full control over your video meeting infrastructure
- ✓No dependency on Zoom for business-critical meetings
- ✓Self-hosted deployment with complete data sovereignty
What you give up
- △No Zoom Rooms for one-click conference room systems
- △No built-in AI Companion for meeting summaries and action items
- △No Zoom Phone for integrated business telephony
- △No 1,000-participant webinar capability with Q&A and polls
Switching Cost
Zoom's lock-in is the brand recognition, not the data. Meeting recordings download as MP4 files. Calendar integrations use standard protocols. The real challenge is the network effect: everyone knows how to join a Zoom meeting, and switching means sending unfamiliar meeting links. Small teams can switch in a day. Enterprise orgs with Zoom Rooms hardware, Zoom Phone, and hundreds of recurring meetings should budget 2-3 weeks. The hidden cost is the participant experience: your external meeting participants may not have accounts on the new platform, adding friction to every call.
| jitsi-meet | bigbluebutton | |
|---|---|---|
| Overlap | 70% | 50% |
| Migration | moderate | significant |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 |
| Best for | Teams with DevOps | Teams with DevOps |
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Drop-in Replacements
Ranked by feature coverage
jitsi-meet
7370% coverageJitsi Meet - Secure, Simple and Scalable Video Conferences that you use as a standalone app or embed in your web application.
Jitsi Meet is a full-featured video conferencing platform you can self-host or use instantly at meet.jit.si. No account required to join a call.
bigbluebutton
5750% coverageA complete web conferencing system for virtual classes and more!
BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom built specifically for online teaching. It handles real-time audio, video, screen sharing, whiteboard annotations, polling, breakout rooms, and session recording.
Building Blocks
Zoom is a platform. It bundles multiple capabilities into one subscription. These tools each cover one piece. Teams often assemble 2–3 of them instead of paying for the full suite.
AWS Cognito