jitsi-meet

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. HD video, screen sharing, chat, polls, virtual backgrounds, end-to-end encryption. Works in every modern browser plus native iOS and Android apps.

The project is backed by 8x8, which means real engineering resources behind it, not just weekend commits. Self-hosting gives you complete control over your data, useful if you work in healthcare, government, or anywhere compliance matters. Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams are the obvious alternatives, but none of them let you own the infrastructure. For embedding video into your own app, the SDKs compete directly with Twilio and Daily.co at zero licensing cost.

The catch: self-hosting Jitsi at scale is not trivial. The video bridge architecture needs tuning for large meetings, and you will spend real time on TURN server setup. The free meet.jit.si instance works fine for small teams but has no SLA.