# Chatto

55 Hacker News commenters recommended Chatto and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** 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.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to self-host (4 comments): "It’s designed to be extremely easy to self-host on your own infrastructure." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833714)) "one of the easiest to spin up an instance of that I've seen thus far" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48845801)) "easier to host and less complicated than Mattermost" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843632))
- Fast, responsive interface (3 comments): "one of the main things I like about Chatto is just how fast everything feels" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48837890)) "Chatto just flies and Slack feels incredibly sluggish." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48837786)) "I've played with Chatto a bit and it seems surprisingly solid overall thus far." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49078053))
- Clean, nice-looking UI (2 comments): "Seems to be an open-source Slack and Discord alternative with a nice UI." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49077063)) "first self-hostable, open source one I've seen that doesn't look like design is the very last item" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48845264))
- Works well on mobile (2 comments): "it does also have first-class PWA support, so you can easily install the webapp as a mobile app on mobile devices. Works great on Android." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48840211)) "commits to providing a strong PWA experience that also works great on mobile" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842590))

## What people warn about

- Missing enterprise features like SSO (2 comments): "feels much nicer to use than Slack, but as of now it's missing some of the more 'Enterprise' features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833415)) "While I do need E2E and SSO making Chatto not suitable, it looks pretty cool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48840313))
- Code quality and trust concerns (2 comments): "But looking at the code, I wouldn’t trust any of my personal information to it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358009)) "I can guarantee it's a buggy, incoherent mess, same as every other vibe coded app I've ever tried" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48834858))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Slack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/slack.md): 248 recommend
- [Microsoft Teams](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-teams.md): 228 recommend
- [Zulip](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zulip.md): 143 recommend
- [Mattermost](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mattermost.md): 40 recommend
- [Fluxer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fluxer.md): 22 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Chatto", https://hackerapproved.com/p/chatto/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).