---
title: "Sblurp: chat for communities"
description: "Sblurp is group chat with channels, threads and roles. Each community runs on its own server, and one Sblurp account signs you in to all of them."
doc_version: 1
last_updated: 2026-10-16
---

# Hang out in channels your community owns.

Sblurp is group chat with channels, threads and roles. Each community runs on its own server, and one Sblurp account signs you in to all of them.

Free, in your browser. Desktop & mobile apps coming soon. Hosting your own community starts at about $4 a month.

## Getting started

1. [Create an account](/signup) at sblurp.chat. You need an email address and must be 13 or older.
2. Open an invite link from a community, or add a community by its address in the app.
3. The app asks before it shares your profile with a community.

## How to host a community

Run the open-source server on your own machine. Read the [self-host guide](/docs/self-host).

## Why another chat platform?

Tired of slow apps, ads, warnings, paid-only features, popups, AI features, strange policy decisions and other junk you never asked for? Sblurp is fast group chat for communities that want a place of their own, with one account that works everywhere.

### Slack

Salesforce's office chat, priced per seat and getting pricier.

| Slack | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Free plans hide everything older than 90 days and delete it after a year. | Keep history forever, or have it delete itself after a set number of days. |
| Business+ went from $12.50 to $15 a seat in 2025, with AI bundled in. | No seats to buy. The server runs on a small machine you pick. |
| Every workspace is a new account and a new sign-in. | One account signs you in to every community. |

### Discord

One company holds every server, and it keeps changing the deal.

| Discord | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Full access now takes a face scan or a government ID. | Sign up with an email. No face scans, no ID uploads. |
| In 2025 a breach at a Discord support vendor exposed about 70,000 users' ID photos. | Sblurp never asks for your ID, so there is none to leak. |
| Watch ads to earn Orbs. Pay for Nitro to send bigger files. | No ads, no coins, no paywalled basics. |
| Pay for Nitro to react with an animated emoji. Really? | Animated emoji work for everyone, in messages and reactions. |
| One ban from Discord locks you out of every server at once. | Each community runs its own server and sets its own rules. |

### Matrix

Open and clever, and almost nobody can figure out how to use it.

| Matrix | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Pick a homeserver, then pick a client, before you can say hello. | Make an account and you are in. Chat your mom can use. |
| Verify each session and back up your keys, or lose your history. | Sign in on a new device and everything is already there. |
| Rooms are copied to every server whose users join them. | A community's messages stay on its own server. |

### WhatsApp

Built for your phone contacts, and owned by Meta.

| WhatsApp | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Part of Meta's giant data-harvesting ad network. | No ad business behind it. Nobody profiles you. |
| You sign up with your phone number, and every group you join can see it. | You sign up with an email, and nobody else sees it. |
| A community is a pile of group chats you scroll through. | Channels, threads and roles, laid out so you can find things. |

### iMessage

Great for a group of friends who all have iPhones.

| iMessage | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Works fully only on Apple devices. Android friends drop to plain texts. | Works the same in any browser and on any phone. |
| A group is one long chat with no channels or threads. | Channels and threads keep each topic in its own place. |
| No roles or moderation tools for a growing group. | Roles, bans and moderation tools are built in. |
| No bots or automation allowed. | Bots and AI agents are welcome. Sblurp has open APIs, and an MCP server is on the way. |

### Telegram

Huge groups and channels, run by one company, tied to your phone number.

| Telegram | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Sign-up needs a phone number. | Sign up with an email. No phone number, unless a community asks for one. |
| Groups are not end-to-end encrypted. Telegram holds every message on its own servers. | A community runs its own server, so its owner holds the messages. |
| Premium unlocks bigger uploads, and big channels show sponsored messages. | No ads and no paid tier. You get everything. |

### Signal

Signal is great. It is the best choice for private messages. If you need end-to-end encryption, use Signal.

| Signal | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| End-to-end encrypted, so only the people in a chat can read it. (Signal wins this one.) | Not end-to-end encrypted. Community admins can read its messages. |
| Built for private chats, so groups have no channels, threads or roles. | Channels, threads and roles, built for communities. |
| Sign-up needs a phone number. | Sign up with an email. No phone number, unless a community asks for one. |
| New members see nothing from before they joined. | New members can read the history and catch up. |

### Mattermost

Mattermost is great for enterprise and on-prem deployments, like government and finance. If you need enterprise features, use Mattermost.

| Mattermost | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Built for enterprise, with compliance exports, single sign-on and installs on your own network. | Not built for enterprise compliance. |
| Accounts belong to one server, so you sign up again for each one. | One Sblurp account signs you in to every community. |
| Many enterprise features need a paid plan. | No paid tier. You get everything. |

### Vibe code your own

You get exactly the chat you want, hosted wherever you like, doing whatever you want. Then you get to keep it running.

| Your own | Sblurp |
|---|---|
| Exactly the features you want, hosted wherever you like. (Your own wins this one.) | You get the features we built. Can't argue with taste, I guess. |
| It still costs time and tokens, even with an AI writing the code. | Ready now. Sign up and start talking. |
| Nobody keeps working on it once the fun part is over. | Actively developed, with fixes and updates all the time. |
| Desktop, phone and web apps are each a whole new project. | Web, desktop and mobile apps, free, and you build none of them. |

## Familiar on purpose.

Communities down the left, channels next to them, the conversation in the middle. If you have used Slack or Discord, you already know where everything is.

## Two ways to run channels.

Each community picks one, and can switch later without losing a message.

### Pick your channels

Like Slack. Everyone starts in a few default channels, then browses the list and joins the ones they care about.

### Channels by role

Like Discord. Give someone the Film club role and the film channels show up for them. Nobody has to join anything.

## Make it yours with bots.

Paste in a few lines of JavaScript to greet newcomers, post a reminder every Monday or decide who gets in. Or bring a whole program, like an AI agent, a build server or a news feed, and it joins as a member. [See how bots work.](/docs/bots)

### Decide who gets in

A small script can ask a question at the door, or let in only people with a verified email or who said they are over 18.

### Bring your AI agent

Connect your own agent with a bot token, and it reads, answers and helps out like any member. It only sees the channels its role allows. [See AI agents.](/docs/agents)

## Host a community.

The server is one open-source program that keeps everything in one folder, so a small rented server or a computer at home can run it. People sign in with their Sblurp account, so your server never stores a password. A server for about 250 people online at once costs [about $4 a month](/docs/hosting). [Read the self-host guide.](/docs/self-host)

## Sitemap

- [Sblurp: chat for communities](https://sblurp.chat/index.md): Sblurp is group chat with channels, threads and roles. Each community runs on its own server, and one Sblurp account signs you in to all of them.
- [About Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/about.md): Why Sblurp exists: chat for communities that each run their own server, with no ads, no unasked-for AI and an honest word on encryption.
- [Privacy at Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/privacy.md): What sblurp.chat stores about you, what it never stores, what it shares with communities you join, and how to get a copy or delete it.
- [Terms of use](https://sblurp.chat/terms.md): The terms for a sblurp.chat account: who can sign up, what you must not do, and what we do and do not promise. A first draft.
- [Create your Sblurp account](https://sblurp.chat/signup.md): Create a Sblurp account: one account for every Sblurp community you join. You need an email, a username, a password and to be 13 or older.
- [Sign in to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/login.md): Sign in to your Sblurp account with your email or username and password, or with a passkey. One account works in every Sblurp community.
- [Reset your password](https://sblurp.chat/forgot.md): Forgot your Sblurp password? Type the email you signed up with and we send a link to choose a new one. The link works once, for one hour.
- [Sblurp docs](https://sblurp.chat/docs.md): Sblurp documentation: how accounts and communities work, how to run a community server, how to add bots, and the full API reference.
- [Accounts and communities](https://sblurp.chat/docs/accounts.md): How a Sblurp account relates to the communities you join: what sblurp.chat keeps, what each community server sees, and what stays private.
- [Join a community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/join.md): Join a Sblurp community: add it by address or invite link, answer its questions, choose what to share, and join.
- [Sblurp glossary](https://sblurp.chat/docs/glossary.md): The words the Sblurp docs use, from account and community to issuer, track, bot token and seq, each with a link to the page that explains it.
- [Run a Sblurp community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/self-host.md): Run a Sblurp community on your own server: one small program and one data folder. What you need, how to start it, and what it stores.
- [Run a server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/create.md): For developers: start your own Sblurp community. Run the open-source server, join it first to become the owner, then set it up and invite people.
- [Set up a server with AI](https://sblurp.chat/docs/ai.md): Not a developer? Ask an AI assistant such as Claude to set up your Sblurp community server.
- [Sblurp server sizes and costs](https://sblurp.chat/docs/hosting.md): Which server size to rent for a Sblurp community and what it costs each month: measured limits per size and prices at Fly.io, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVHcloud and AWS Lightsail.
- [Run Sblurp on Render](https://sblurp.chat/docs/render.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Render: one Starter web service with a persistent disk, the released image, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on Railway](https://sblurp.chat/docs/railway.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Railway: one service from the released image, a volume for /data, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on Fly.io](https://sblurp.chat/docs/fly.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Fly.io: one always-on machine with a volume, h2c streaming, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2.
- [Run Sblurp on any VPS](https://sblurp.chat/docs/vps.md): Run a Sblurp community server on a small virtual server from Hetzner, OVHcloud, Akamai Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean or any other host, with Docker Compose.
- [Run Sblurp with Docker and Compose](https://sblurp.chat/docs/docker.md): Run a Sblurp community server with Docker Compose and Caddy: the files, the settings, where the data lives, and how to run it behind your own proxy.
- [Run Sblurp with Podman](https://sblurp.chat/docs/podman.md): Run a Sblurp community server with a Podman Quadlet file, with daily automatic updates that roll back when a new image does not start.
- [Sblurp server configuration](https://sblurp.chat/docs/configuration.md): Every flag and environment variable of the Sblurp community server, with defaults, plus the backup variables of the container image and the built-in limits.
- [TLS and reverse proxies for Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/proxies.md): Put Caddy, nginx or Cloudflare in front of a Sblurp community server without breaking live streams: h2c, no buffering, no compression.
- [Back up a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/backups.md): Back up a Sblurp community server: Litestream copies the database to Cloudflare R2 within 10 seconds, an encrypted backup tool copies the files, or make a plain copy. How to restore.
- [Update a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/updates.md): Release tracks for the Sblurp server image, the daily update check, manual and automatic updates, and how to roll back.
- [Verify a Sblurp release](https://sblurp.chat/docs/provenance.md): Check that a Sblurp server image was built by the public release workflow, with GitHub attestations or cosign.
- [Troubleshooting a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/troubleshooting.md): Fix common problems with a Sblurp community server: sign-in fails, messages arrive late, certificates, file links, and where the logs are.
- [Invites in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/invites.md): Make a Sblurp community invite only, create invite links with an expiry and a use limit, and revoke them.
- [Moderation and roles in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/moderation.md): Permissions in a Sblurp community (owner, admin, moderator, member), custom roles that limit channels, channel modes, kicks and bans.
- [Safety in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/safety.md): Who can read your messages, how to protect your account, what to do about unwanted messages, how to report a message, what moderators can do, age rules, and how to reach sblurp.chat.
- [Your data in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/data.md): What sblurp.chat stores about your account, what a community server stores, who controls each, how long data is kept, backups, export and deletion.
- [Sblurp bots](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bots.md): Two ways to add a bot to a Sblurp community: a JavaScript plugin on the server, or a program anywhere that uses the API with a bot token.
- [Sblurp bot tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bot-tokens.md): Make a Sblurp bot with a token, run the example bot, and call the API from any language: subscribe to events and reply to mentions.
- [Connect an AI agent to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/agents.md): How to connect a self-hosted AI agent, such as OpenClaw, NanoClaw or Hermes Agent, to a Sblurp community with a bot token. No built-in connector exists yet.
- [Use Sblurp from Claude Code and other MCP clients](https://sblurp.chat/docs/mcp.md): Add a Sblurp community to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, VS Code or another MCP client by URL, sign in with your sblurp.chat account, and let the agent read and post as you.
- [Sblurp plugins](https://sblurp.chat/docs/plugins.md): Write a Sblurp bot as one JavaScript file and install it in the app, with the API or in the plugins folder: hooks for joins, messages, slash commands and timers, replies, limits and the dice example.
- [Sblurp API: protocol and transport](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api.md): How clients and bots talk to a Sblurp community server: Connect RPC over HTTP, the proto contract, JSON and binary bodies, auth, streaming and versioning.
- [Sblurp API explorer](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/explorer.md): Browse and try every call of the Sblurp community server API in your browser, from the OpenAPI 3.1 description in openapi.json.
- [Sblurp API: sign-in and tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/auth.md): How sign-in works across Sblurp: OAuth 2.0 with PKCE at sblurp.chat, per-server access tokens, JWT claims, refresh token rotation, JWKS, and bot tokens.
- [Sblurp API: events](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/events.md): The Sblurp live event stream: Subscribe, sequence numbers, replay and resync, heartbeats, every event kind, who receives it, and unread counts.
- [Sblurp API: uploads and files](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/files.md): The plain HTTP endpoints of a Sblurp community server: uploads, signed file URLs, custom emoji, invite links and the health check.
- [Sblurp API: errors and rate limits](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/errors.md): Error codes the Sblurp community server returns, what each one means for a client, and the rate limits for people and bots.
- [ServerService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/server-service.md): Every ServerService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [ChatService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/chat-service.md): Every ChatService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [BotService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/bot-service.md): Every BotService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields.
- [API types](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/types.md): The messages and enums the Sblurp community server API shares between calls, with every field.