The best team chat apps, according to hackers
11 team chat apps were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 4 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended team chat apps with the badge. Each figure is 10 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Topic threads organize complex conversations
An open-source, self-hostable team chat whose topic-based threads make big, complex conversations easy to follow and catch up on, though self-hosted mobile notifications need a paid subscription.
Easy to self-host
Open-source, self-hostable chat app that feels fast and is easy to set up; caveats are an unstable API and missing enterprise features like SSO.
Feels like Discord, familiar UI
People recommend Fluxer as a Discord alternative that feels familiar and is open source and self-hostable. Critics say it has age verification and scaling problems.
All 11 team chat apps, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slack | 248 | 387 | 39% | 12 | 10 yrs10 owners | — |
| 2 | Microsoft Teams | 228 | 701 | 25% | 13 | 1.5 yrs11 owners | — |
| 3 | Zulip | 143 | 58 | 71% | 11 | 5 yrs10 owners | Approved |
| 4 | Chatto | 55 | 13 | 81% | 5 | — | Approved |
| 5 | Mattermost | 40 | 91 | 31% | 10 | 2 yrs5 owners | — |
| 6 | Fluxer | 22 | 6 | 79% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Tied 7 | Campfire by 37signals | 16 | 3 | 84% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Tied 7 | Stoat | 16 | 16 | 50% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 9 | Rocket.Chat | 14 | 11 | 56% | 6 | — | — |
| Tied 9 | Dock team chat | 14 | 19 | 42% | 2 | — | — |
| 11 | Google Chat | 9 | 32 | 22% | 4 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same team chat app in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to team chat apps that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.