Open source / Live video & meetings
BigBlueButton
A web conferencing system designed for classes, with a whiteboard, breakout rooms and recording.
Does it fit your team?
- Consider it if
- You teach live classes and want to host the whiteboard, breakout rooms and recordings yourself, and someone can run a dedicated Ubuntu server.
- Look elsewhere if
- You cannot dedicate a server with 8 cores, 16 GB of RAM and 250 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth to it.
- Can you use it commercially?
- Yes
LGPL-3.0. You can host it for paid classes without restriction. If you modify its own code and distribute it, those changes must be open.
- Is it still maintained?
- Active
Last push on 2026-10-08. The repository is not archived.
- How hard is it to deploy?
- Hard
It needs a clean, dedicated Ubuntu 22.04 server that does not share ports 80 and 443 with another site, a domain with a valid SSL certificate (browsers will not grant camera and microphone access without one), and UDP ports 16384 to 32768 open. Installation is through the official bbb-install.sh script.
- What does it cost?
- High
The software is free; the server is the cost. The stated production minimum is 8 cores, 16 GB RAM and 250 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth, with 500 GB of disk if you record sessions or 50 GB if you do not.
- What to watch out for
- Bandwidth is the big item
What 250 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth costs on a Chinese cloud has not been checked here; get a quote before deciding. The docs also ask for both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address.
Last checked: .
If your priority is different
Your industry is not here?
Tell me the industry and what you need solved. I will look at it next.