# Jitsi Meet

42 Hacker News commenters recommended Jitsi Meet and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, open source video calls that work well and can be self-hosted. Main caveat: the public meet.jit.si instance has become more locked down.

## Why people recommend it

- Calls work reliably (7 comments): "Jitsi works very well; I've had thousands of hours of calls on it at this point." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954133)) "Jitsi and Nextcloud Talk are free and work very well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46769396)) "Jitsi meet exists for long time and it works" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46768402))
- Easy to self-host (6 comments): "Based on their docs, self-hosting is well supported, and probably a $50-$100 server is more than enough, so a lot cheaper than Zoom." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46167605)) "easiest way to private video calls is just to self-host Jitsi Meet anyway" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624765)) "having a jitsi server that just works is nothing to shake a stick at" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48149489))
- Free and open source (2 comments): "Jitsi is an excellent free and open source alternative." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678851)) "Jitsi and Nextcloud Talk are free and work very well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46769396))
- Replacement for Zoom or Teams (4 comments): "Video / screen sharing and voice chat: Zoom, BigBlueButton, Jitsi" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985852)) "We use Jitsi for voice/video calls + screen sharing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947317)) "Matrix/IRC client plus Jitsi, instead of Teams" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46083897))

## What people warn about

- Public instance locked down, needs sign-in (3 comments): "Jitsi used to be so frictionless, but now that their public instances are a bit more locked-down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953240)) "This only (but still sadly) applies to the use of the meet.jit.si instance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46792116)) "They switched to requiring google/microsoft accounts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783231))
- Hard to set up and run (3 comments): "when I looked at it again late last year it seemed more complicated" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967243)) "I got it working, but it was a huge pain to set up." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678397)) "I find it more complicated to run Jitsi in-house." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46875598))
- Scales poorly, feels bloated (2 comments): "We found Jitsi to be too bloated and clunky." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50003732)) "I just don't think it scales well enough." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691763))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zoom](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zoom.md): 99 recommend
- [Google Meet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-meet.md): 39 recommend
- [Proton Meet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/proton-meet.md): 17 recommend
- [Galene](https://hackerapproved.com/p/galene.md): 6 recommend
- [Cisco Webex](https://hackerapproved.com/p/webex.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

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