Zulip overview by zulip
Zulip server and web application. Open-source team chat that helps teams stay productive and focused.
About Zulip overview
From the project's README at github.com/zulip/zulip. Lightly cleaned for readability; for the full source see the upstream repo.
Zulip is an open-source organized team chat app with unique [topic-based threading][why-zulip] that combines the best of email and chat to make remote work productive and delightful. Fortune 500 companies, [leading open source projects][rust-case-study], and thousands of other organizations use Zulip every day. Zulip is the only [modern team chat app][features] that is designed for both live and asynchronous conversations.
Zulip is built by a distributed community of developers from all around the world, with 99+ people who have each contributed 100+ commits. With over 1,500 contributors merging over 500 commits a month, Zulip is the largest and fastest growing open source team chat project.
[](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/actions/workflows/zulip-ci.yml?query=branch%3Amain) [](https://codecov.io/gh/zulip/zulip) [][mypy-coverage] [](https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff) [](https://github.com/prettier/
Health score breakdown
6-dimension composite. See methodology for formula and weights.
Adoption signals
Real-world usage data, pulled from each registry. The bigger the numbers, the more battle-tested the project.
| Signal | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 25k | github.com/zulip/zulip |
| GitHub forks | 9.8k | github.com/zulip/zulip |
Release & maintenance
Is this project actively maintained, or about to die? Check the recency of last commit and last release.
| Project age | 10.6 years | since Sep 2015 |
| Last commit | 4 days ago | May 3, 2026 |
| Releases shipped | 126 | last: 9 days ago |
| Security policy | SECURITY.md | declared by maintainers |
| Funding links | 3 | declared by maintainers |
Self-hosting cost across providers
Detected requirements: 4GB RAM, 40GB disk minimum. Cheapest plan per provider that meets the requirement.
| Provider | Plan | Specs | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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
CVE-2026-25741. What people say on Hacker News
Replaces these paid SaaS
Zulip overview is one of the open-source alternatives to:
Ready to self-host Zulip overview?
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.
Similar open-source projects
Projects in our directory that replace the same SaaS or share topics with Zulip overview.