Bigbluebutton by bigbluebutton

A complete web conferencing system for virtual classes and more!

conferencingwebrtcvideocollaborationvideo-conferencingbigbluebutton
Verdict 79/100 health $4.13/mo cheapest, hetzner 2/5 setup difficulty 6 open CVEs Last release 10 days ago

Self-host Bigbluebutton on hetzner for $4.13/mo and save approximately $118/year vs Zoom.

Health score
79 /100
6-dim composite
Self-hosts from
$4.13 /mo
hetzner · CAX11
Difficulty
2 /5
Docker + read README
GitHub stars
9.1k
6.0k forks

About Bigbluebutton

From the project's README at github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton. Lightly cleaned for readability; for the full source see the upstream repo.

BigBlueButton ============= BigBlueButton is an open-source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn.

BigBlueButton supports real-time sharing of audio, video, slides (with whiteboard annotations), chat, and the screen. Instructors can engage remote students with polling, emojis, multi-user whiteboards, shared notes, and breakout rooms. During the session, BigBlueButton generates analytics that are visible to moderators in the Learning Analytics Dashboard.

Presenters can record and playback content for later sharing with others.

We designed BigBlueButton for online learning, it can be used for many other applications as well. The educational use cases for BigBlueButton are

Health score breakdown

6-dimension composite. See methodology for formula and weights.

activity
97
maturity
100
community
94
security
85
sustainability
53
adoption
40

Adoption signals

Real-world usage data, pulled from each registry. The bigger the numbers, the more battle-tested the project.

SignalValueSource
GitHub stars 9.1k github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton
GitHub forks 6.0k github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton

Release & maintenance

Is this project actively maintained, or about to die? Check the recency of last commit and last release.

Project age16.0 yearssince May 2010
Last commit3 days agoMay 4, 2026
Releases shipped272last: 10 days ago
Security policySECURITY.mddeclared by maintainers

Self-hosting cost across providers

Detected requirements: 4GB RAM, 40GB disk minimum. Cheapest plan per provider that meets the requirement.

ProviderPlanSpecsMonthly
hetzner CAX11 2c · 4GB · 40GB $4.13 USD Deploy →
vultr VC2 1c · 1GB · 25GB $5 USD Deploy →
linode Nanode 1GB 1c · 1GB · 25GB $5.12 USD Deploy →
digitalocean Basic Regular 1GB 1c · 1GB · 25GB $6 USD Deploy →

Security advisories

51 known advisories tracked via OSV.dev. 6 currently open without a documented fix. Most recent: CVE-2026-27736.

Replaces these paid SaaS

Bigbluebutton is one of the open-source alternatives to:

Zoom alternatives

Ready to self-host Bigbluebutton?

Spin up a hetzner CAX11 (4GB RAM, 40GB disk) for $4.13/mo and follow the project's official install docs.

Data last refreshed May 7, 2026.

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Frequently asked questions

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