Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application type
Alerts
- Discontinued
Platforms
- Online
- Self-Hosted
- Python
Pidgin is described as 'Chat program which lets you log into accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on XMPP and sitting in an IRC channel at the same time' and is a leading instant messenger in the social & communications category. There are more than 100 alternatives to Pidgin for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Windows, Mac, Web-based and Android apps. The best Pidgin alternative is Element. It's not free, so if you're looking for a free alternative, you could try Element or Matrix. Other great apps like Pidgin are Jami, Beeper, SeaMonkey and Element X.
Messenger for Desktop is a wrapper for the official client messenger.com. Therefore it works like a regular browser which can only navigate to the messenger.com web app. MFD doesn't touch your messages, account or personal data. All that is handled securely by Facebook.

HoloIRC is an open source IRC client for Android 4.0 and up. It is designed to be as simple to use as possible while being extremely small in size and fairly light in resources. It works with IRC bouncers as well as regular servers.




MCabber is a small XMPP (Jabber) console client. It includes features such as SASL/SSL/TLS support, MUC (Multi-User Chat) support, history logging, command completion, OpenPGP encryption, OTR (Off-the-Record Messaging) support, dynamic modules and external action triggers.




A simple-to-use messaging app for 1:1 communication and small groups supporting SMS, MMS, matrix and XMPP through libpurple.

A server-less network video phone that is powered by DirectX for real-time video streaming. SSuite UltraCam Video Phone was designed to be a server-less communicator for use within any LAN or Wi-Fi network.



Retro AIM Server is an instant messaging server that revives AOL Instant Messenger (and ICQ!) clients from the 2000s.

CGI:IRC is a Perl/CGI program that lets you access IRC from a web browser, it is designed to be flexible and has many uses such as an IRC gateway for an IRC network, a chat-room for a website or to access IRC when stuck behind a restrictive firewall.






Toxic is a client with an ncurses interface, written entirely in C. It has support for all basic features, as well as 1-on-1 audio/video chats, and is capable of working on bare-bones systems that lack graphical interfaces.
