# Tox

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Tox and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free peer-to-peer messenger that people recommend as mature and trusted. Common caveat: hard to install and use.

## Why people recommend it

- Recommended as mature, trusted best practice (3 comments): "should really be replaced by tox as a best practice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49509734)) "SimpleX, and especially Tox, are much more mature." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078338)) "Personally I use and trust Tox." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016593))

## What people warn about

- Hard to install and use (2 comments): "There’s a bit of a bootstrap problem there in that Tox (and its dependencies) have to be installed first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49509947)) "unusable from UX perspective (Tox, Matrix)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46573490))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Signal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/signal.md): 486 recommend
- [Bitchat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitchat.md): 56 recommend
- [Element](https://hackerapproved.com/p/element.md): 50 recommend
- [Briar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/briar.md): 50 recommend
- [Delta Chat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delta-chat.md): 48 recommend

## Cite as

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