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.
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
Government and defense teams that must keep chat on their own infrastructure
Engineering and security operations teams running incident response in chat
Regulated companies that need retention and audit controls
Watch out for
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
Prices are not published; the pricing page directs buyers to sales
Licenses are sold as prepaid annual per-seat subscriptions, with each server needing its own license
Marketing focuses on high-security sectors, so it may be more than a small team needs
Made by
Element
Mattermost
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.
