Zulip
Team Chat · by Kandra Labs, Inc.
Open source team chat with threaded conversations.
Goes straight to the vendor’s site.
Your fit
Get a fit score for Zulip
Tell us your must-haves and budget; we’ll score Zulip and its alternatives against them.
Summary
Open source team chat with threaded conversations.
Good fit for
Not assessed yet
Poor fit for
None recorded
Pricing
$ as listed by the vendor · each price dated
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free (Zulip Cloud) | Free | – | |
| Self-hosted Free | Free | – | |
| Self-hosted Basic | from $3.50/mo per user | Not offered or not recorded | – |
| Standard | $8/mo per user | from $6.67/mo per user | – |
| Plus | $12/mo per user | $10/mo per user | – |
| Self-hosted Business | $8/mo per user | $6.67/mo per user | – |
| Self-hosted Enterprise | Pricing on request (contact sales) | – | |
Free (Zulip Cloud)
Free
Self-hosted Free
Free
Self-hosted Basic
- Billed monthly
- from $3.50/mo per user
- Billed annually
- Not offered or not recorded
Standard
- Billed monthly
- $8/mo per user
- Billed annually
- from $6.67/mo per user
Plus
- Billed monthly
- $12/mo per user
- Billed annually
- $10/mo per user
Self-hosted Business
- Billed monthly
- $8/mo per user
- Billed annually
- $6.67/mo per user
Self-hosted Enterprise
Pricing on request
Features
Overall availability, and what each plan includes where we know it.
Capabilities
| Feature | Overall |
|---|---|
| Access permissions | Included |
| API access | Included |
| Audit trail | Included |
| Channels | Included |
| Custom assistants | Included |
| File sharing | Included |
| File uploads | Included |
| Full-text search | Limited |
| Guest access | Included |
| Mobile app | Included |
| Threaded conversations | Included |
| Video calls | Included |
| Workflow automation | Included |
- Access permissionsIncluded
- API accessIncluded
- Audit trailIncluded
- ChannelsIncluded
- Custom assistantsIncluded
- File sharingIncluded
- File uploadsIncluded
- Full-text searchLimited
- Guest accessIncluded
- Mobile appIncluded
- Threaded conversationsIncluded
- Video callsIncluded
- Workflow automationIncluded
Integrations
| Feature | Overall |
|---|---|
| Slack integration | Included |
| Zapier integration | Included |
- Slack integrationIncluded
- Zapier integrationIncluded
Support
| Feature | Overall |
|---|---|
| Priority support | Included |
- Priority supportIncluded
Security and compliance
| Feature | Overall |
|---|---|
| End-to-end encryption | Limited |
| GDPR compliance | Included |
| Single sign-on | Included |
- End-to-end encryptionLimited
- GDPR complianceIncluded
- Single sign-onIncluded
“Unknown” and “Not recorded” mean we have no data yet, not that the feature is missing.
Reviews of Zulip
No reviews from Fitvio users yet.
Used Zulip? Be the first to review it.
Reviews come from people who confirmed their email address and declared they are not connected to the vendor or a competitor. A person checks every review against our guidelines before it appears; reviews are never removed for being negative, and affiliate links play no part. How we moderate reviews
What users say about Zulip
Themes from 78 public Hacker News comments that mention Zulip (May 16 to Oct 27). These are people’s opinions, not facts we have verified. Counts are comments, not a survey.
What people like
Self-hostable and open source
6 commentsSeveral commenters value that Zulip is open source under Apache 2 and that they can self-host it, with one describing their family's self-hosted instance.
“we self host zulip and are quite happy with it”
Hacker News · Jul 8(opens in a new tab) “the license for this (AGPL) is more restrictive than Zulip (Apache 2)”
Hacker News · Jul 9(opens in a new tab) Good bot and automation support
3 commentsA few commenters describe Zulip as easy to set up and convenient for creating bot users and automations.
“It's very easy to create bot users with both and create some automations.”
Hacker News · Jul 21(opens in a new tab) “You can have different agents in different chats.”
Hacker News · May 22(opens in a new tab) Threaded topics keep conversations organized
3 commentsSome commenters say Zulip's explicit topic-based threading keeps conversations easier to follow than Slack-style threads inside channels.
“Zulip's UX raises signal.”
Hacker News · Jul 18(opens in a new tab) “Zulip lives in the space between forum and chat, it might be what you're looking for.”
Hacker News · May 28(opens in a new tab)
Common complaints
Unintuitive for new users
4 commentsSeveral commenters find Zulip hard to learn and unintuitive, especially its explicit stream and topic model.
“Zulip is closest to what I want but quite untuitive to new employees.”
Hacker News · Jul 22(opens in a new tab) “I hate zulip and find it incredibly unintuitive.”
Hacker News · Jul 19(opens in a new tab) Polish lags behind Slack
3 commentsSome commenters say Zulip and Mattermost are less polished than Slack, and that Mattermost's model is closer to Slack's.
“The quality of Mattermost and Zulip was NOT exactly as polished as Slack.”
Hacker News · Oct 2(opens in a new tab) “Teams, Zulip, WhatsApp, they all suck so much”
Hacker News · Aug 1(opens in a new tab) No end-to-end encryption
2 commentsSome commenters say Zulip lacks end-to-end encryption and that its roadmap has declined to add it, making it a weaker choice for secure chat.
“avoid Zulip for a properly secure Discord replacement, givin its lack of (and roadmap refusal for) e2e”
Hacker News · Sep 28(opens in a new tab) “zulip for one, is not encrypted at rest.”
Hacker News · Jul 19(opens in a new tab)
Grouped by AI on Oct 30, 2026. Every quote is copied word for word from the linked comment, and a theme needs at least two separate comments.
Alternatives to Zulip
Other tools in Team Chat with enough data to compare. Listed alphabetically: not a ranking.
$3.50/mo
paid plans from