DISCLAIMER: This page is for information only. It is not legal, financial or procurement advice and does not replace your own due diligence. Licenses, ownership, features and certifications can change: confirm what your decision rests on with the official sources.
🩺 Vitals
- 🟢 Last active: 2026-11-04
- 📦 Latest release: 8.9.0 (2026-10-05)
- 🐞 Open issues: 4330
- 🌟 Stars: 46.4k
What do these metrics mean?
- Last active: when code was last pushed, as of our last check. The dot is green when that was recent, grey otherwise. A long gap can mean a tool is finished and stable, not only unmaintained.
- Latest release: the most recent stable version the maintainers published as a release on the forge. Some healthy projects publish only tags, or publish their versions elsewhere.
- Open issues: unresolved reports and requests. A high number is normal for a popular project and is not a warning on its own.
- Stars: how many people bookmarked the project on its forge. A rough popularity signal, not a measure of quality.
🏗️ Profile
- Official: rocket.chat
- Source: github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat
- License: MIT (core; paid edition under its own terms)
- Deployment: Docker Container | Kubernetes (K8s)
- Jurisdiction: United States 🇺🇸 (Rocket.Chat Technologies Corp.)
- Compliance (SaaS): Rocket.Chat Cloud Hosting Service security and compliance page
- Compliance (Self-Hosted): Self-Hosted (User Managed)
- Complexity: Low (2/5) - The free build needs only the Rocket.Chat server and MongoDB; the default compose adds a proxy, monitoring and a message bus that only the paid multi-instance mode uses
- Maintenance: Moderate (3/5) - A minor release about every month, each supported for six months; the operator keeps MongoDB on a supported version through forced upgrades
- User Management: Moderate (3/5) - Local accounts with two-factor sign-in, LDAP, SAML and OAuth single sign-on, built-in roles and TLS through the bundled proxy in the free build; audit logs come with a paid edition
What the scores mean: Reading the Scores
1. The Executive Summary
What is it? Rocket.Chat is a team chat platform for real-time conversations between colleagues, with other companies and with customers or citizens, on web, desktop and mobile apps. The vendor does not recommend the free build for production where business-critical operations, compliance or reliability depend on it. Private rooms and direct messages can be end-to-end encrypted once the administrator turns it on, with keys made on users' devices. A paid edition adds several server instances for high availability and scale, operation without any connection to the vendor, a FIPS mode, AI features and voice calls.
The Strategic Verdict:
- 🔴 For teams that must run with no call to the vendor, on the free edition: Avoid. Its workspace turns read-only unless it reports usage data to the vendor daily; only a paid licence runs offline (The Compliance Shift).
- 🟢 For teams leaving Slack that do not depend on their chat for business-critical operations, compliance or reliability: Strong Buy. An importer brings over Slack's users, channels and messages, and private rooms can be end-to-end encrypted in the free build (Cost of Ownership, What is it?).
2. Cost of Ownership
| Cost Component | Rocket.Chat (Self-Hosted) |
|---|---|
| Pricing Model | No license fee for the core; paid edition for some features |
| Adoption | Importer for Slack (users, channels, messages) |
| Operations | Single VM, several services (Rocket.Chat, MongoDB, proxy, monitoring), grows with concurrent users; plus your team's time to run it (Maintenance, in the Profile) |
| Support | From the vendor: Rocket.Chat Cloud Hosting Service, a managed service, and paid support for self-hosted installs (enterprise support); elsewhere, a paid service provider |
| Exit | Database dump (mongodump); leaves out uploads kept in external object storage |
What each row covers: Total Cost of Ownership
3. Risk Assessment
- Jurisdiction: Rocket.Chat Technologies Corp., the project's vendor, is registered in the United States, under US law. The vendor runs Rocket.Chat Cloud Hosting Service, a hosted service where your data can live; its hosts include a party domiciled in or controlled from the US. Data in Rocket.Chat Cloud Hosting Service is within reach of the US CLOUD Act wherever it is stored, since its operator is based in the US. US law can compel the vendor to hand over the usage data every install of the free edition sends it.
- The Compliance Shift: Every install of the free edition sends usage data to the vendor, and switching it off stops the edition's core function, so the operator must account for that transfer in its own compliance work. Without its daily report the free workspace turns read-only: users can read rooms but not send messages, and only a paid licence runs with no call to the vendor. Self-hosting moves the security and compliance duties of running the software to the operator (the operator's compliance checklist). Any audit of Rocket.Chat Cloud Hosting Service (such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001) covers the vendor's own systems, never your install.
- License Risk: Rocket.Chat is under MIT, an OSI-approved permissive license (what it allows and requires). MIT lets anyone, the vendor included, release modified versions under other terms, closed ones too.
4. Market Landscape
🏢 Proprietary Incumbents
- Slack: Slack is a cloud service for team messaging in channels.
Data held by: Slack Technologies, LLC, United States 🇺🇸 (controlled by Salesforce, Inc.), subject to the US CLOUD Act for the data it holds, wherever it is stored.
Why teams leave: By default it trains global predictive models on customers' messages and files; opting out takes an email.
Exit: Workspace export (JSON in a ZIP), partial export (files as links, private conversations only on higher plans, on application) - Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams is a cloud service for chat, calls and online meetings at work.
Data held by: Microsoft Corporation, United States 🇺🇸, subject to the US CLOUD Act for the data it holds, wherever it is stored.
Why teams leave: Encryption with its customers' own keys needs a top Microsoft plan or a paid add-on.
Exit: Teams Export APIs (Microsoft Graph)
With Rocket.Chat: Private rooms and direct messages can be end-to-end encrypted in the free build, with keys made on users' devices (What is it?).
🤝 Open-Source Alternatives
- Mattermost: Open-core team chat server for messaging in channels and threads, run as one binary with PostgreSQL, under AGPL-3.0-only.
- Element: Open-core team chat and calling server on the Matrix protocol, with encrypted private rooms and federation, under AGPL-3.0-or-later.