Best Open Source Collaboration & Communication Tools in 2026
Tools for team collaboration, project communication, and file sharing across remote and hybrid teams.
The most popular pick this year is Excalidraw with 122,999 GitHub stars, but all 22 options below are worth considering depending on your needs.
22 open source collaboration & communication tools — ranked by GitHub stars. Browse all
Excalidraw
Open-source virtual whiteboard for creating hand-drawn style diagrams and sketches.
Mastodon
Decentralized social network server that federates with the broader Fediverse — run your own instance instead of relying on Twitter/X.
Plane
Open-source project management platform — an alternative to Jira, Linear, Monday, and ClickUp.
Jira
Cal.com
Open-source scheduling infrastructure — a self-hostable alternative to Calendly for booking meetings and appointments.
Nextcloud
The most popular self-hosted cloud platform for file storage, collaboration, and communication.
Jitsi Meet
Open-source video conferencing platform — free, secure, and self-hostable.
Google Meet
Focalboard
Open-source, self-hosted project management tool — a free alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.
Trello
Navidrome
Modern, lightweight self-hosted music server compatible with Subsonic/Airsonic clients — stream your music everywhere.
WeKan
Open-source kanban board built with Meteor — a free and self-hosted alternative to Trello.
Trello
Etherpad
Open-source real-time collaborative text editor you can self-host.
Google Docs
OpenProject
Open-source project management software — an alternative to Jira, Asana, Trello, and Monday.com.
Jira
PeerTube
Federated, decentralized video hosting platform built on ActivityPub.
YouTube
Lemmy
Federated link aggregator and community discussion platform — a decentralized, self-hostable alternative to Reddit.
Formbricks
Open-source survey and experience management platform for product and customer research.
Google Forms
Owncast
Self-hosted live video streaming server with built-in chat and Fediverse integration.
YouTube
BigBlueButton
Open-source virtual classroom platform built for online education and webinars.
Google Meet
CryptPad
End-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite with zero-knowledge privacy.
Google Docs
ONLYOFFICE
Self-hosted office suite with real-time collaboration.
Google Docs
Collabora Online
Open-source LibreOffice-powered collaborative office suite for self-hosted environments.
Google Docs
Element Call
End-to-end encrypted group video calling built on the Matrix open protocol.
Google Meet
4gaBoards
Straightforward realtime kanban boards for intuitive task tracking with dark mode and collaborative features.
Trello
Matcha
A beautiful terminal email client built with Go and Bubble Tea. An open source alternative to Superhuman and Outlook for the command line.
Microsoft OutlookHow we rank these tools
Tools are ranked by GitHub stars as a proxy for community adoption and trust. Stars reflect how many developers found a project valuable enough to bookmark — a reasonable signal for quality in the open source world. We only list tools that are actively maintained and open source.
Looking for tools you can run yourself? Browse self-hosted collaboration & communication tools →