Synapse Matrix homeserver
Matrix homeserver in Hosting & cloud
Matrix chat server people run for small groups and find easy to update; critics say it is heavy on memory and storage.
Matrix chat server people run for small groups and find easy to update; critics say it is heavy on memory and storage.
61 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 28
- criticize it
- 33
- approval share
- 46%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 2 years
Median of the 7 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 28 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs well for small groups
“You can run one for a few friends and it scales just as well as a private discord for a few friends.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification” “its still the daily driver for me and about five other people”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years” “this is what I have been using for my self and I like it”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Synaps a self-hosted personal health monitor as a weighted knowledge grap” Easy to run and update
“I've been running my homeserver happily for > 5 years and it was fairly straightforward.”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years” “Synapse itself has been a pleasure to maintain”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years” “it just works and is trivial to update”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Which Matrix and Mastodon servers are you using and why?” Faster and lighter since 2022
“it has improved lately despite losing some of the team, and thanks to having stopped dispersing the resources”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Matrix messaging gaining ground in government IT” “Synapse took up a lot of memory, with occasional slowdowns. But then, circa 2022, Synapse improved”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years” “Synapse is faster now, and Synapse Pro is apparently even faster.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years” Features work, no corruption
“Reactions, emojis, media, it all just works.”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp” “I haven't noticed any corruption at all”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Uses lots of memory and storage
“Synapse took up a lot of memory, with occasional slowdowns. But then, circa 2022, Synapse improved”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years” “Synapse eating your VPS is the direct consequence of that design choice.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Running My Own XMPP Server” “Synapse is very heavy, other implementations are less production ready”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Matrix messaging gaining ground in government IT” - Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Matrix messaging gaining ground in government IT”
Inefficient state storage hurts performance
“If it weren't for the convoluted state resolution system, there wouldn't be a need to store gigabytes worth of state groups in the database.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “We Abandoned Matrix: The Dark Truth About User Security and Safety (2024)” “it's due to Synapse's implementation deliberately cutting corners on storage efficiency while trading off for speed”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “We Abandoned Matrix: The Dark Truth About User Security and Safety (2024)” “Synapse's unperformant implementation has decreased general confidence in the protocol itself”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “XMPP and Metadata” Hard to set up and administer
“Matrix/synapse is one of the more difficult / PitA projects I've ever gotten up and running.”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Matrix messaging gaining ground in government IT” “running a homeserver sucked. Really hard to do on limited resources.”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “XMPP and Metadata” “quite a resource hog and not even remotely easy to setup/administer”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Cloudflare claimed they implemented Matrix on Cloudflare workers. They didn't” Federation and compatibility problems
“is violating the Matrix protocol, making it impossible to invite users to chat if they are on compliant Matrix servers”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Registration without a phone number on Signal will use zero-knowledge proofs” “you would be at the mercy of very real and frequent federation problems”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synapse Matrix homeserverThis page | 28 | 33 | 46% | 8 | 2 yrs7 owners | — |
| Conduit Matrix homeserver | 15 | 4 | 79% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 73 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“is violating the Matrix protocol, making it impossible to invite users to chat if they are on compliant Matrix servers”
“you would be at the mercy of very real and frequent federation problems”
“I have been using synapse for years with little issue.”
“Synapse is more of a utility suite than a launcher, so they actually complement each other well”
“free version has the core features.. no need pay.”
“The easy QR code scan on desktop feature was the reason I downloaded it.”
“it has a free forever version - pro version is optional”
“The tool seems very interesting/promising to me!”
“That they publicly use it at all is great though”
“Matrix works really well for this.”
“a free, open source notes app for macOS that opens any folder of markdown files, git-backed”
“this is what I have been using for my self and I like it”
“instead of monitoring everything manually, you define the signals you care about, and the system listens for them continuously”
“The protocol is already in production and turned out to be the foundation of a broader family”
“my Synapse install is the FOSS community release, and pmap -d shows above single-user”
“Synapse eating your VPS is the direct consequence of that design choice.”
“You can run one for a few friends and it scales just as well as a private discord for a few friends.”
“it has improved lately despite losing some of the team, and thanks to having stopped dispersing the resources”
“You can easily host Synapse on cheap VPS products for less than 5€/month.”
“synapse servers RAM and storage requirements grow and grow and grow”
“Matrix/synapse is one of the more difficult / PitA projects I've ever gotten up and running.”
“Synapse is very heavy, other implementations are less production ready”
“quite a resource hog and not even remotely easy to setup/administer”
“Reactions, emojis, media, it all just works.”
“it just works and is trivial to update”
“Synapse's unperformant implementation has decreased general confidence in the protocol itself”
“the Synapse server implementation being slow”
“running a homeserver sucked. Really hard to do on limited resources.”
“IMO more up-to-date documentation with a real corporation behind keeping it up-to-date and useful”
“If it weren't for the convoluted state resolution system, there wouldn't be a need to store gigabytes worth of state groups in the database.”
“it's due to Synapse's implementation deliberately cutting corners on storage efficiency while trading off for speed”
“Synapse took up a lot of memory, with occasional slowdowns. But then, circa 2022, Synapse improved”
“It was bad enough before that I had to detour to random places to find workarounds for things like how nginx does it's thing differently”
“I've been running my homeserver happily for > 5 years and it was fairly straightforward.”
“its still the daily driver for me and about five other people”
“Synapse itself has been a pleasure to maintain”
“Synapse is faster now, and Synapse Pro is apparently even faster.”
“I haven't noticed any corruption at all”
“Ran synapse for a few months”
“everything about Synapse is less broken than Dendrite.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.