Comparison of LAN messengers

Summary

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable LAN messengers.

General information edit

Basic general information about the LAN messengers: creator/company, license/price, among others.

Protocol Author, creator First public release date Latest stable version Cost (USD) Software license Programming language
BeeBEEP[1][2] BeeBEEP Protocol Marco Mastroddi 2010 5.8.6 (February 13, 2023; 14 months ago (2023-02-13)) No cost GPL-3.0-or-later C++ and Qt
BORGChat ? Ionut Cioflan 2002 v1.0.0 b438 (March 31, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-03-31)) [±] No cost[3] Proprietary ?
Briar Bramble Protocol Briarproject.org 2018 1.4.19 (January 4, 2023; 15 months ago (2023-01-04)) No cost GPL-3.0-or-later Java
iChat Bonjour IM Protocol Apple Inc. 2002 6.0.1 (1002) (February 1, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-02-01)) bundled with OS Proprietary Likely Objective-C
iptux[4] Windows Messenger service Jally, ManPT, others 2008 0.51 (November 20, 2009; 14 years ago (2009-11-20)) No cost[5] GPL-2.0-or-later ?
Miranda NG Windows Messenger service Roland Rabien 2000 0.96.1 (June 2, 2022; 22 months ago (2022-06-02)) No cost GPL-2.0-or-later C/C++
Pidgin[6] Bonjour IM Protocol Mark Spencer, others 1998 2.14.12 (December 31, 2022; 15 months ago (2022-12-31)) No cost GPL-2.0-or-later C
qTox Tox Protocol Tux3 ? 1.17.6 (March 7, 2022; 2 years ago (2022-03-07)) No cost GPL-3.0-or-later C++ and Qt

Operating system support edit

The operating systems the messengers can run on without emulators or compatibility layers.

Client Windows Mac OS Linux Android iOS BSD Other
BeeBEEP Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Raspberry OS
BORGChat Yes No No No No No
Briar No No No Yes No No
iChat No Yes No No No No
iptux
Miranda NG Yes No No No No No
Pidgin Yes Yes Yes FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
Solaris

Illumos
qTox Yes Yes Yes No No FreeBSD

Features edit

Information on what features each of the clients support.

Toolkits or SDKs Private messages Private chat Public chat Message board Encryption File transfer Unicode (UTF-8) Message filtration Graphical smileys Message logging Whiteboard Terminal Service Compatibility User base in Active Directory Serverless (No server required)
BeeBEEP No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
BORGChat No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes
Briar No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes No No No Yes
iChat 1 No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes No No No No No No No No
iptux No Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No No No No No No Yes
Miranda NG ? Yes ? ? ? ? Yes Yes ? Yes Yes ? ? ? Yes
qTox No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No Yes

Note 1: Using Apple's Bonjour protocol

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "BeeBEEP (Free Office Messenger)". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
  2. ^ Wallen, Jack (2012-08-22). "Get LAN-based interoffice secure chat with BeeBEEP". techrepublic.com. TechRepublic. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
  3. ^ "BORGChat". Softpedia. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  4. ^ Wallen, Jack (2010-09-17). "Instant message on your LAN with iptux". ghacks.net. Ghacks. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
  5. ^ "iptux". freecode.com. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  6. ^ "Use Pidgin for Chatting And Transferring Files on Local Network Without Internet Connection". ubuntubuzz.com. Retrieved 9 December 2016.