ngircd
Portable and lightweight Internet Relay Chat server for small or private networks.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 5 commits in the last 90 days, latest release rel-28 (Jul 2026).
At a glance
ngircd quick facts
- Health score
- 52/100 SLOWING
- Stars
- 582
- Last commit
- 6 days ago (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- rel-28, Jul 2026
- Licence
- GPL-2.0
Top alternatives to ngircd
In its own words
The project's README opens: "ngIRCd is a free, portable and lightweight Internet Relay Chat ([IRC]) server for small or private networks, developed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ([GPL]); please see the file COPYING for licensing information."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
ngircd scores 52/100, #7 of 11 in Communication - IRC: 5 commits in the last 90 days earn 5.8 of 35 points, the latest release (rel-28, 4 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 582 stars add 11.1 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the slowing band (40 to 69). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 29.2 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 5.8 / 35
5 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
rel-28 released 4 months ago
- Stars 11.1 / 20
582 stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 5
- Last 90 days
- 17
- Last 12 months
- 6 days ago
- Last push
Ranked #7 of 11 tools in Communication - IRC by health , between UnrealIRCd (#6) and Glowing Bear (#8) .
Details
| Licence | GPL-2.0 |
| Platforms | C, deb |
| Latest release | rel-28 · 4 months ago |
| Stars | 582 |
| Open issues | 27 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | ngircd/ngircd ↗ |
ngircd vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a category with ngircd (Communication - IRC), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weechat | 94 | 3.4k | GPL-3.0 | yesterday |
| InspIRCd | 93 | 1.4k | GPL-2.0 | 6 days ago |
| Ergo | 86 | 3.4k | MIT | 8 days ago |
| The Lounge | 85 | 6.4k | MIT | yesterday |
| ZNC | 58 | 2.1k | Apache-2.0 | 2 days ago |
| ngircd (this tool) | 52 | 582 | GPL-2.0 | 6 days ago |
ngircd: common questions
Is ngircd still maintained?
ngircd had 5 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 6 days ago; the latest tagged release, rel-28, is from 4 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.