Pick up to 4 tools and see their free plans, entry prices, platforms and limits in one table. Every fact comes from each vendor's own pages, checked 7 November 2026.
Open communities and fan groups that want voice and text in one place
Creators and developers building a public community around a project
Government and public institutions that need to host and control their own messaging
Organizations that want federation between servers and vendors
Individuals or small groups that want an encrypted chat app
Watch out for
Aimed at gaming and social use; Discord describes itself as a platform for connections around playing games
Nitro adds personal perks and is not a team plan with admin or compliance controls
The pages read do not state business pricing or enterprise controls
Paid prices are not published; the pricing page sends buyers to sales
The pricing page describes self-hosted deployments only, so a hosted option was not confirmed
Running a server means you manage it yourself on the free tier
Made by
Discord
Element
Entry prices are the cheapest paid plan, as each vendor publishes it; “What it covers” says what that price is per (a user, a channel, a brand, a number of contacts). The sources are listed on each tool's page.
Every tool in team chat apps is on its category page, with the written head-to-heads on Compare.
