BigBlueButton
Supports real-time sharing of audio, video, slides (with whiteboard controls), chat, and the screen. Instructors can engage remote students with polling, emojis, and breakout rooms.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 1,186 commits in the last 90 days, latest release v4.0.1 (Oct 2026).
Also an alternative to Zoom.
At a glance
BigBlueButton quick facts
- Health score
- 86/100 GOOD
- Stars
- 9,260
- Last commit
- yesterday (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- v4.0.1, Oct 2026
- Licence
- LGPL-3.0
Top alternatives to BigBlueButton
Full rankings: Zoom alternatives
In its own words
The project's README opens: "BigBlueButton BigBlueButton is an open-source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
BigBlueButton scores 86/100, #3 of 10 in Communication - Video Conferencing: 1,186 commits in the last 90 days earn 35.0 of 35 points, the latest release (v4.0.1, yesterday) earns 25.0 of 25, 9,260 stars add 15.9 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is Docker support, worth 10.0 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity 35.0 / 35
1186 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
v4.0.1 released yesterday
- Stars 15.9 / 20
9.3k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support biggest shortfall 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 1186
- Last 90 days
- 2,518
- Last 12 months
- yesterday
- Last push
Ranked #3 of 10 tools in Communication - Video Conferencing by health , between plugNmeet (#2) and Jitsi Video Bridge (#4) .
Details
| Licence | LGPL-3.0 |
| Platforms | Java |
| Latest release | v4.0.1 · yesterday |
| Stars | 9,260 |
| Open issues | 662 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton ↗ |
BigBlueButton vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with BigBlueButton (Communication - Video Conferencing), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jitsi Meet | 98 | 30k | Apache-2.0 | yesterday |
| plugNmeet | 91 | 575 | MIT | 2 days ago |
| BigBlueButton (this tool) | 86 | 9.3k | LGPL-3.0 | yesterday |
| MiroTalk P2P | 70 | 4.8k | AGPL-3.0 | today |
| MiroTalk SFU | 69 | 3.1k | AGPL-3.0 | today |
| Janus | 61 | 9.2k | GPL-3.0 | yesterday |
BigBlueButton: common questions
What does BigBlueButton replace?
Repoly lists BigBlueButton as an open-source alternative to Zoom. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where BigBlueButton stands against the others.
Is BigBlueButton still maintained?
BigBlueButton had 1,186 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was yesterday; the latest tagged release, v4.0.1, is from yesterday. Repoly recomputes this nightly.