Slack Alternatives for Team Chat, Free and Self-Hosted

Slack still works well, but the free plan has a short memory. The Slack pricing page lists 90 days of visible message history on Free, up to 10 apps and huddles only between two people. Pro is $7.25 per user a month billed yearly or $8.75 billed monthly, and Business+ is $15 yearly or $18 monthly. Most of the AI features, such as AI search and translations, sit on Business+.

People leave Slack for three reasons: the bill grows with every seat, the free plan loses old messages, or the company wants its chat on its own servers. The seven apps below cover those three cases. All prices are in US dollars, per user per month unless noted.

Prices below are as of November 8, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Microsoft Teams

If your company already pays for Microsoft 365, Teams is usually sitting there unused or half used. Channels, threaded chat, meetings and file storage in SharePoint come in one licence, so replacing Slack can lower the bill instead of moving it. The Teams business comparison lists Teams Essentials at $4.00 per user a month and Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7.00, both paid yearly, with meetings up to 30 hours and 300 people.

Business Basic is the better deal for most offices: it adds web and mobile Word, Excel and PowerPoint and 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user, against 10 GB on Essentials. Teams Premium is a $10.00 add-on on top of either.

Best for: Microsoft 365 shops that want chat, meetings and files under one bill.

Pricing:

• Teams Free for personal use: group meetings up to 60 minutes, 100 people, 5 GB per user
• Teams Essentials: $4.00 per user a month, paid yearly
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $7.00 per user a month, paid yearly
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot: $23.50 per user a month, paid yearly
• Teams Premium add-on: $10.00 per user a month, paid yearly

Watch out for:

• On Teams Essentials, recordings with transcripts and live captions work in English only, while other business plans cover more than 30 caption languages.
• Business plans are annual subscriptions that renew automatically, and Microsoft also sells versions without Teams, so check the plan name before you buy.

Official site: Microsoft Teams.

Google Chat

Google Chat is the messaging part of Google Workspace and shows up inside Gmail as well as in its own app. Spaces work like Slack channels, and a Docs, Sheets or Drive link dropped into a space opens with the right permissions already in place. For a company that runs on Gmail, nothing new needs to be bought.

Workspace Business Starter costs $7 per user a month on a one-year plan, or $8.40 on flexible monthly billing, and includes 30 GB of storage per user. Business Standard at $14 raises that to 2 TB and lets Meet calls hold 150 people.

Best for: Companies on Google Workspace that want chat next to Gmail and Drive.

Pricing:

• Personal Google account: free
• Business Starter: $7 per user a month on a yearly plan, $8.40 flexible
• Business Standard: $14 yearly, $16.80 flexible
• Business Plus: $22 yearly, $26.40 flexible

Watch out for:

• Business Starter cannot record Meet calls to Drive, per the Workspace pricing page, so recorded huddles need Standard or higher.
• There is no free business tier; a team on personal Gmail accounts gets Chat, but no admin controls.

Official site: Google Chat.

Zulip

Zulip fixes the problem of a busy Slack channel where three conversations run over each other. Every message belongs to a stream and a topic, so you read a channel as a list of named threads and can catch up on one without scrolling through the rest. Teams spread across time zones tend to like it most.

It is open source and can be self-hosted for free, or used on Zulip Cloud. The Zulip plans page lists Cloud Standard at $6.67 per user a month billed yearly, or $8 monthly, with unlimited search history and 5 GB of storage per user. Open-source projects, research groups and many non-profits can get Standard free.

Best for: Remote teams that want threads as the default, not an afterthought.

Pricing:

• Cloud Free: $0, search history of 10,000 messages, 5 GB total storage
• Cloud Standard: $6.67 per user a month billed yearly, $8 monthly
• Cloud Plus: $10 yearly or $12 monthly, 10-user minimum
• Self-hosted: free; Basic $3.50 per user a month for push notifications beyond 10 users

Watch out for:

• The free Cloud plan only searches the latest 10,000 messages, which a busy team reaches quickly.
• Self-hosted servers send mobile push notifications free for up to 10 users only; beyond that you need a paid plan or community sponsorship.

Official site: Zulip.

Pumble

Pumble, from the CAKE.com team behind Clockify, copies Slack's layout closely: channels on the left, threads, mentions and direct messages. The difference is the price. The Pumble pricing page lists a free plan with unlimited users and unlimited message history, which is the exact thing Slack Free takes away.

Paid plans stay cheap. Pro is $2.49 per seat a month billed yearly or $2.99 monthly and adds group video calls for up to 50 people and 10 GB per seat. Business at $3.99 yearly raises calls to 100 people and adds meeting recordings.

Best for: Small companies that want unlimited history without paying Slack prices.

Pricing:

• Free: unlimited users and history, 10 GB per workspace, up to 3 apps
• Pro: $2.49 per seat a month billed yearly, $2.99 monthly
• Business: $3.99 yearly, $4.99 monthly
• Enterprise: $6.99 yearly, $7.99 monthly

Watch out for:

• The free plan shares 10 GB of storage across the whole workspace and allows only 3 apps.
• Its app directory is small next to Slack's, so check that your key tools connect before you move.

Official site: Pumble.

Mattermost

Mattermost is built for teams that cannot put chat on someone else's cloud: defence, government, banks and engineering groups. You run it on your own servers, in a private cloud or fully air-gapped, and it adds playbooks for incident response and integrations for tools such as GitLab and Jira. The open-source project remains under the AGPLv3 licence.

The free side changed with v11 in October 2025. Mattermost Entry is now the default free edition for small teams, and the MIT-compiled Team Edition was cut from 1,000 to 250 users. All paid plans, from Professional to Enterprise Advanced, are sold by quote.

Best for: Security-minded teams that must host chat themselves.

Pricing:

• Mattermost Entry: free, with usage limits
• Team Edition: free, up to 250 users
• Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Advanced: quote-based annual seat licences, no public price

Watch out for:

• Entry shows only the most recent 10,000 messages and limits calls to 40 minutes, according to Mattermost's v11 announcement, a change many forum users objected to.
• There is no public price list, so budgeting needs a sales call.

Official site: Mattermost.

Rocket.Chat

Rocket.Chat is the other big self-hosted option, and its free Starter plan is more generous on features than Mattermost's. The Rocket.Chat plans guide says Starter covers up to 50 users with LDAP, SAML, single sign-on, end-to-end encryption, retention policies and unlimited push notifications.

It also connects to video tools you may already use, including Jitsi, BigBlueButton, Google Meet and Zoom. The MIT-licensed Community edition handles up to 100 concurrent users, though Rocket.Chat itself advises against it for business-critical use.

Best for: Small self-hosted teams that need SSO and encryption at no cost.

Pricing:

• Starter: free, up to 50 users, self-managed
• Community: free, open source (MIT), up to 100 concurrent users
• Commercial, Government and Defense plans: price on request

Watch out for:

• When a Starter workspace hits 50 users it cannot add more, and the legacy Pro plan stopped taking new buyers after April 29, 2026.
• Paid prices are not published, and Starter comes with community support only.

Official site: Rocket.Chat.

Discord

Plenty of startups, open-source projects and creator communities already run on Discord instead of Slack. Servers have text channels, always-on voice channels you drop into without scheduling a call, screen sharing and a large bot ecosystem, and the base app costs nothing for any number of members.

Paid tiers are personal, not per workspace. Nitro Basic costs $2.99 a month with 50 MB uploads, and Nitro costs $9.99 a month with larger uploads and HD streaming. Free accounts can upload files up to 20 MB since August 2026.

Best for: Public communities, open-source projects and teams that hang out in voice.

Pricing:

• Discord: free for unlimited members
• Nitro Basic: $2.99 a month per person
• Nitro: $9.99 a month, or $99.99 a year in the US App Store
• Prices vary by country

Watch out for:

• Text messages are not end-to-end encrypted; Discord's DAVE protocol covers only audio and video calls.
• Since September 22, 2026, every account is sorted into an age group, and some users must confirm their age with a face scan or ID before they can see age-restricted channels.

Official site: Discord.

How to choose

When to stay with Slack

Stay with Slack if your work runs through Slack Connect channels with clients and partners, or through Workflow Builder and the thousands of apps in its directory. No alternative here has that reach across other companies. If cost is the only problem, the yearly Pro plan at $7.25 per user is cheaper than many people assume. If your group is a community more than a company, our Discord alternatives page covers that side.

Frequently asked questions