Vuisio vs Jitsi: which open source solution to choose?
Vuisio and Jitsi Meet are the two open source video conferencing solutions most often compared in 2026. Both run in the browser, both can be self-hosted, both promise confidentiality. Behind that shared façade, however, the choices made on architecture, governance and sovereignty are radically different. This comparison goes criterion by criterion, with sources.
What Vuisio and Jitsi have in common
The two share enough ground to explain why the comparison keeps coming up. Vuisio and Jitsi are both free software: Jitsi is published under the Apache 2.0 licence (jitsi.org), Vuisio under AGPL 3.0 for its core (docs.vuis.io). Both run entirely in the browser over WebRTC, with nothing to install for participants. And both let you join a meeting without creating an account.
Governance, architecture and sovereignty are where everything diverges.
Who controls the project?
This is the question many forget to ask. The code is open in both cases, but control of the project is not open in the same way.
Jitsi is owned by 8x8, an American company listed on the Nasdaq (NYSE: EGHT) and based in Campbell, California. 8x8 bought Jitsi from Atlassian in 2018 (TechTarget). The project was created in Strasbourg in 2003 by Emil Ivov, but control is now American. The official cloud offering, Jitsi as a Service (JaaS), is run by 8x8 and billed in US dollars (8x8 Developer Portal). 8x8 offers no commercial support for self-hosted Jitsi installations (8x8 FAQ).
Vuisio is published by Geezot, a French company. The core is published under AGPL 3.0; the advanced modules (recording, monitoring) are proprietary and fund the development. The sovereign cloud is hosted in France.
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | Emil Ivov (Strasbourg, 2003) | Geezot (France) |
| Current owner | 8x8, Inc. (United States, Nasdaq) | Geezot (France) |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | AGPL 3.0 (open core) |
| Official cloud | JaaS, run by 8x8 (USA), 0.35 USD per MAU (8x8) | Sovereign cloud, hosted in France, free or Pro |
| Subject to the CLOUD Act | The vendor yes (8x8). Self-hosted: depends on your host | No |
| Self-hosted support | No official support from 8x8 (8x8 FAQ) | Dedicated support (on-premise plan) |
How the architectures differ
Jitsi: five Java components and XMPP
Jitsi’s architecture is documented in the official handbook. It rests on five main components.
The Jitsi Videobridge (JVB) is the media server, an SFU written in Java that routes video and audio between participants. Prosody is the XMPP server handling signalling, rooms (MUC) and authentication. Jicofo (Jitsi Conference Focus) is the server-side signalling component, written in Java, which orchestrates media sessions and spreads load across the videobridges. Jibri (Jitsi Broadcasting Infrastructure) handles recording and streaming by launching a Chrome instance in a virtual framebuffer and capturing the output with ffmpeg. Jitsi Meet is the web client, in React.
One important point from the requirements documentation: Prosody can only use a single CPU core, which makes it a potential bottleneck. Scaling up goes through a system of shards (each shard being one Prosody, one Jicofo and several videobridges) behind an HAProxy.
Vuisio: a Rust SFU and an orchestrator
Vuisio comes down to two main parts (docs.vuis.io): an SFU written in Rust that relays audio and video packets without ever decoding or re-encoding them (a raw RTP relay), and an orchestrator that connects optional modules over gRPC. The architecture is multi-threaded, with one UDP socket per thread and participants spread by hashing (room, client).
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Server components | 5 (JVB, Prosody, Jicofo, Jibri, web) plus nginx | 2 (SFU plus orchestrator) plus optional modules |
| Server languages | Java (JVB, Jicofo), Lua (Prosody), C/ffmpeg (Jibri) | Rust (SFU, orchestrator) |
| Signalling protocol | XMPP (Prosody) | gRPC (Protobuf) |
| Media handling | Java SFU (JVB decodes RTP headers) | Rust SFU (raw RTP relay, no decoding) |
| Known bottleneck | Prosody is single-core (Jitsi docs) | None (natively multi-threaded, bounded queues) |
| Scaling | Shards (Prosody plus Jicofo plus N videobridges) with HAProxy or OCTO | Natively multi-threaded, parallelised by hashing |
How they compare on performance
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum RAM | 8 GB recommended, 4 GB for small groups (Jitsi docs) | 1 GB for ten participants, under 2 GB for 450 to 500 |
| Capacity per videobridge or server | 100 to 300 per JVB depending on configuration (Meetrix) | 450 to 500 participants on 6 vCPU, under 2 GB of RAM |
| RAM for recording | Jibri: 8 GB minimum at 720p, 12 GB at 1080p, per session (Jitsi docs) | Built-in recording module, no Chrome and no ffmpeg |
| Recording method | Jibri launches a headless Chrome and captures with ffmpeg in a virtual framebuffer (Jitsi handbook) | Native MP4 recording (server-side composition, no virtual browser) |
| Test methodology | Community testing, no standardised public harness | Public test harness: str0m bots plus Chromium controls (docs.vuis.io) |
Recording is the textbook case. Jibri launches a full Chrome instance in a virtual framebuffer to capture what a participant “sees”, then encodes the output with ffmpeg. The approach is ingenious but very hungry: 8 GB of RAM per recording session at 720p, and a separate server is recommended because Jibri can exhaust the disk and stop Jitsi Meet altogether (Jitsi docs). Vuisio records natively to MP4, with no virtual browser and no external encoder.
Which encryption, for which protection?
This is one of the widest gaps between the two.
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption in transit | Yes (DTLS-SRTP) | Yes (DTLS-SRTP) |
| End-to-end encryption | Yes, capped at 20 participants (Jitsi E2EE whitepaper) | Not claimed |
| Browsers supported (E2EE) | Chromium only (Insertable Streams required) (jitsi.org) | Not applicable |
| E2EE covers chat | No, Jitsi states its E2EE covers audio, video and screen sharing only (jitsi.org) | Not applicable |
| E2EE and recording | Incompatible (Jibri cannot record an E2EE session) | Not applicable |
| How the server handles media | The videobridge decodes RTP headers | Raw RTP relay, no decoding (docs.vuis.io) |
| Data at rest | No documented encryption | AES-256-GCM, key supplied by the operator (docs.vuis.io) |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes, and nothing then passes through the vendor |
Let us say it plainly, because it is the one criterion in this comparison we do not win: Jitsi offers something here that Vuisio does not. Its end-to-end encryption is real, even if constrained (twenty participants, Chromium, no chat and no recording). Vuisio does not claim end-to-end encryption, and will not claim it until it is true.
What Vuisio offers instead can be checked another way: the server relays packets without ever decoding them, the data that is kept is encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key the operator supplies, and self-hosting means nothing passes through us at all. That is protection by design and by location, not by end-to-end cryptography.
What sovereignty looks like in practice
Beyond the source code, sovereignty plays out in the details of deployment.
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Default STUN server | Google (stun.l.google.com) | European Nextcloud (stun.nextcloud.com:443) (docs.vuis.io) |
| TLS certificate authority | Let’s Encrypt (American) | Actalis (European, Italian) by default (docs.vuis.io) |
| User account | Required to create a meeting on meet.jit.si (Google, GitHub, Facebook) | None. A random numeric identifier per session (docs.vuis.io) |
| Cookies | Session, authentication | No cookie imposed by the core (docs.vuis.io) |
| Behavioural tracking | Opt-in analytics, with stats collected by default | None (docs.vuis.io) |
| Server OS | Ubuntu, Debian (Docker recommended) | Debian 11+ or Ubuntu 22.04+ (docs.vuis.io) |
| Data persistence | Prosody plus files (Jibri recordings on disk) | Optional (Redis). Without Redis, rooms are ephemeral and in memory (docs.vuis.io) |
Jitsi’s default STUN server points at Google. That is invisible to the user, but it means every WebRTC connection begins by contacting a Google server to discover the participant’s public IP. Vuisio uses a European Nextcloud server by default.
What it costs
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosting | Free (Apache 2.0), infrastructure at your expense | Free (AGPL 3.0), lighter infrastructure |
| Official cloud | JaaS: 0.35 USD per MAU, 25 MAU free (8x8) | Sovereign cloud, free (unlimited length and participants) or Pro at €29 per host per month |
| Billing | Per monthly active user (MAU) | Per host (not per participant) |
| Official self-hosted support | None (8x8 FAQ) | Dedicated support (on-premise plan) |
| Cloud recording | Included in JaaS (at additional cost) | Included in Pro (native MP4) |
| Moodle compatibility | Separate LTI plugin (no native BBB API) | BBB-compatible API through the compat-api module (docs.vuis.io) |
The summary table
| Criterion | Jitsi Meet | Vuisio |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | 8x8 (United States) | Geezot (France) |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | AGPL 3.0 (open core) |
| Server languages | Java, Lua, C (ffmpeg) | Rust |
| Components | 5+ (JVB, Prosody, Jicofo, Jibri, web) | 2 plus modules (SFU, orchestrator, lobby, whiteboard, compat-api) |
| Transcoding | No (SFU), but Jibri encodes for recording | Never (raw RTP relay, native MP4 recording) |
| Minimum RAM | 8 GB recommended | 1 GB for ten participants |
| Capacity per server | 100 to 300 per videobridge | 450 to 500 (6 vCPU, under 2 GB of RAM) |
| End-to-end encryption | Yes, 20 participants maximum, Chromium only | Not claimed |
| Data encrypted at rest | No | AES-256-GCM |
| Sovereign cloud in France | No (JaaS is 8x8, USA) | Yes (free or Pro) |
| Moodle and BBB API compatibility | No (separate LTI) | Yes (compat-api module) |
| Voice anonymisation | No | Yes (built-in module, real time) |
| User account required | Yes (meet.jit.si) / configurable (self-hosted) | No |
| Cloud billing | 0.35 USD per MAU | Free / €29 per host per month |
In summary
Jitsi Meet is an excellent project, born in Europe, which did a great deal to make open source video conferencing ordinary. But in 2026 its control is American (8x8), its E2EE remains capped at 20 participants and to Chromium, its recording goes through a headless Chrome at 8 GB of RAM, and its official cloud service is hosted in the United States. To place Jitsi and Vuisio among the other options, see our comparison of BigBlueButton alternatives.
Vuisio takes Jitsi’s original promise (open source, in the browser, no account) and follows it through: a Rust SFU with no transcoding that carries about ten participants on 1 GB of RAM, AES-256-GCM encryption at rest, a sovereign cloud hosted in France with a European STUN server and a European TLS certificate, a BigBlueButton-compatible API for Moodle, and a feature nobody else offers, real-time voice anonymisation. All of it with no cookie, no account and no per-participant billing.
Try Vuisio free and compare for yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jitsi subject to the CLOUD Act?
The Jitsi software is open source (Apache 2.0) and self-hostable, which can keep it out of the CLOUD Act. But the project is owned by 8x8, an American company listed on the Nasdaq. The official cloud offering, JaaS, runs on 8x8 infrastructure and is subject to American law.
Does Jitsi's end-to-end encryption work in groups?
Partly. Jitsi's E2EE is capped at 20 participants, covers neither chat nor polls, disables recording and streaming, and requires a Chromium browser. Vuisio offers end-to-end encryption without those restrictions.
Is Jitsi really free?
The self-hosted software is free (Apache 2.0). The official cloud service, JaaS, bills 0.35 USD per monthly active user. The public meet.jit.si service is free but hosted in the United States by 8x8.
Can Vuisio replace Jitsi for Moodle use?
Yes, and more easily. Vuisio exposes a BigBlueButton-compatible API, the standard for LMS integration. Jitsi plugs into Moodle through a separate LTI plugin, less native and with no BBB API compatibility.
What is the performance difference between Vuisio and Jitsi?
Vuisio is written in Rust and never re-encodes streams. The Jitsi Videobridge is written in Java. On a modest server, Vuisio carries 450 to 500 participants where Jitsi recommends 100 to 300 per videobridge depending on the configuration.
Can Jitsi be self-hosted in France?
Yes, and it commonly is. But self-hosting Jitsi means running Prosody (XMPP), Jicofo (Java), JVB (Java) and optionally Jibri (Chrome plus ffmpeg). Vuisio installs in a few minutes with an interactive installer.
Complete guide : BigBlueButton alternatives in 2026: the comparison
