Chitchatter by jeremyckahn

Secure peer-to-peer chat that is serverless, decentralized, and ephemeral

end-to-end-encryptionp2ppeer-to-peerprivacyserverlesswebrtcchatdecentralizedreactephemeralvideo-conferencingweb-mesh
Verdict 59/100 health $4.13/mo cheapest, hetzner 2/5 setup difficulty

Self-host Chitchatter on hetzner CAX11 for $4.13/mo.

Health score
59 /100
6-dim composite
Self-hosts from
$4.13 /mo
hetzner · CAX11
Difficulty
2 /5
Docker + read README
GitHub stars
2.3k
393 forks

About Chitchatter

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

Chitchatter is a free (as in both price and freedom) communication tool. Designed to be the simplest way to connect with others privately and securely, it is: Fully open source (licensed under GPL v2) Peer-to-peer Whenever possible, otherwise a TURN server is used to ensure reliable peer connection End-to-end encrypted (via WebRTC) Ephemeral Message content is never persisted to disk on either the client or server Decentralized No API server required. Chitchatter works completely without an API server - all that's required for basic functionality is availability of GitHub for static assets, and public WebTorrent and TURN relay servers for establishing peer-to-peer communication. An optional API server is available to provide enhanced connectivity features, but users can always choose to use Chitchatter without it. Embeddable Self-hostable

Chitchatter uses Vite. The secure networking and streaming magic would not be possible without Trystero. File transfer functionality is powered by [](https://github.com/jeremyckahn/secure-file-transfer). Status [![Known Vulnerabilities](https://snyk.io/test/github/jeremyckahn/chitchatter/badge.svg?targetFile=pack

Health score breakdown

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

activity
69
maturity
28
community
76
security
70
sustainability
88
adoption
31

Adoption signals

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

SignalValueSource
GitHub stars 2.3k github.com/jeremyckahn/chitchatter
GitHub forks 393 github.com/jeremyckahn/chitchatter

Release & maintenance

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

Project age3.7 yearssince Aug 2022
Last commit9 days agoApr 28, 2026
Funding links1declared 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 →

Ready to self-host Chitchatter?

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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