3 Gather Town alternatives
A virtual office that suits your team's working day.
Compare spatial offices for everyday teamwork, from hosted spaces to your own infrastructure. Polybase is our product, and we explain its limits alongside the others.
Editorial update: 19 October 2026
What should your next tool do better?
A Gather Town alternative should be evaluated as a virtual office, not just another meeting link. Look for visible team presence, nearby conversations and a clear way to switch between social time and focused work.
Gather 1.0 and 2.0 have different features. Before switching, check the version you use and the workflows you would lose. This guide compares Polybase Polyspace, WorkAdventure and Kumospace for a small team pilot.
A different tool for a different need
Start with your requirements, then compare the trade-offs.
Compare at a glance
| Explore the options | Best for | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| WorkAdventure | Teams prepared to customise a virtual world and evaluate its deployment and licence. | AGPL v3 plus the Commons Clause is not an OSI-compliant open-source licence. The administration panel has separate licensing; self-hosting needs operations work. |
| Kumospace | Teams that want a hosted office and prefer configuring rooms to operating servers. | Audio circles, rooms and broadcast behave differently. Test privacy and guest settings for your intended use, and check which plan covers your needs. |
| PolybaseOur product | Teams that want a spatial office alongside ongoing project work, with a choice of deployment. | No automated Gather map importer. Recording needs a supported channel/DM or meeting call, enabled LiveKit Egress, S3-compatible storage and eligible non-guest users; do not assume proximity conversations are recorded. Tenant administrators can configure OIDC SSO providers and SCIM 2.0 provisioning. Test provider setup, verified-domain account mapping and sign-in policies in your deployment. Native SAML support is not included. |
Three virtual office alternatives.
- Product website
WorkAdventure
A custom virtual world with a self-hosting path
WorkAdventure uses maps and avatars for nearby audio, video and text conversations. Discussion bubbles form when participants stop near each other, and can be locked. It offers a hosted service and a source-available self-hosting path.
- Best for
- Teams prepared to customise a virtual world and evaluate its deployment and licence.
- Hosting model
- Vendor-hosted service or self-hosted under its licence.
- What to check
- AGPL v3 plus the Commons Clause is not an OSI-compliant open-source licence. The administration panel has separate licensing; self-hosting needs operations work.
- Product website
Kumospace
A hosted spatial office with room audio
Kumospace combines a shared office floor, proximity audio and rooms. Nearby participants can talk; inside rooms, room audio connects the occupants. Chat and screen sharing support working together within the space.
- Best for
- Teams that want a hosted office and prefer configuring rooms to operating servers.
- Hosting model
- Kumospace’s hosted service.
- What to check
- Audio circles, rooms and broadcast behave differently. Test privacy and guest settings for your intended use, and check which plan covers your needs.
- Product website
Polybase
Our productThe sovereign team workspace
Polyspace is Polybase’s spatial office, using the Atelier design. Move between channel rooms and workstations, talk with proximity audio and share screens. The space editor lets authorised users arrange rooms, furniture and terrain within the same workspace as Chat, Tasks and Docs.
Polybase is our product. This entry describes our own implementation and its limits.
- Best for
- Teams that want a spatial office alongside ongoing project work, with a choice of deployment.
- Hosting model
- EU-region cloud, private VPC or self-hosted. Self-hosted calls use a LiveKit server.
- What to check
- No automated Gather map importer. Recording needs a supported channel/DM or meeting call, enabled LiveKit Egress, S3-compatible storage and eligible non-guest users; do not assume proximity conversations are recorded. Tenant administrators can configure OIDC SSO providers and SCIM 2.0 provisioning. Test provider setup, verified-domain account mapping and sign-in policies in your deployment. Native SAML support is not included.
Four checks for a virtual office.
- 01
Does the space fit your working day?
Compare informal coworking with scheduled meetings. Try a small layout before moving the whole team.
- 02
Who can hear or join the conversation?
Check proximity, room boundaries, mute controls and guest access with several participants.
- 03
Who runs the office and media services?
Hosted and self-hosted deployments have different operating responsibilities. Check the licence and every external dependency.
- 04
Where do decisions and follow-up work go?
Check how the office connects to the chat, documents and tasks your team uses after the conversation.
Start with your requirements, then compare the trade-offs.
Spatial office or ordinary meeting app?
In a spatial office, location and presence help people find a conversation. An ordinary meeting app usually starts from a room link or invitation. A spatial office can support informal coworking, but may add unnecessary movement if your team only needs scheduled calls.
Gather 2.0 also includes channels, threaded chat and meeting features. Compare your actual workflows rather than assuming Gather is only an avatar map. Polyspace is useful when you want the office within a workspace that also contains your tasks and documents.
Test proximity audio and privacy boundaries
Test who hears you as you approach, leave and enter a room. Also check microphone and camera controls, guest permissions and screen sharing. A quiet corner is not a substitute for access controls; use the product’s supported conversation boundaries for sensitive discussions.
WorkAdventure offers discussion bubbles that can be locked. Kumospace distinguishes proximity audio from room audio, with broadcast as a separate behaviour. Polyspace uses nearby audio and channel rooms. Test each selected setup; these models are not identical.
Pilot the office before rebuilding your map
Start with one team area and a meeting room. Run a normal work session and collect feedback on joining, focus time, audio and finding colleagues. Keep your existing office available until the pilot proves useful. Polybase has no automated Gather map importer; recreate only the spaces and links the pilot needs.
For self-hosting, assign owners for updates, backups, permissions and media connectivity. Polybase requires PostgreSQL and Dragonfly alongside the application; calls use a self-hosted LiveKit server. WorkAdventure’s source is available under AGPL v3 with the Commons Clause, and its self-hosted administration panel has separate licensing.
Where Polybase fits
Use the same pilot and requirements for our product as for any alternative.
When it fits
An office next to ongoing work
Polyspace belongs to the workspace where channel conversations, tasks and documents already live.
A choice of deployment
Choose EU-region cloud, private VPC or a self-hosted workspace. Your operating responsibilities depend on that choice.
An office your team can shape
Authorised users can arrange Atelier furniture, rooms and terrain with the space editor.
What to check
Gather map migration
There is no automated Gather map importer. Plan a pilot and recreate the layout you need.
Call recording
Eligible channel/DM and meeting calls support explicit recording with enabled LiveKit Egress and S3-compatible storage. Guests cannot start it. Check permissions and the supported call workflow; do not assume proximity audio is recorded.
Enterprise sign-on and certifications
Tenant administrators can configure OIDC SSO providers and SCIM 2.0 provisioning. Test provider setup, verified-domain account mapping and sign-in policies in your deployment. Native SAML support is not included. Polybase is not SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certified yet; both are on the roadmap. We answer security questionnaires and architecture questions today.
Choosing a Gather Town alternative.
Which Gather Town alternative should our team try?
Try Polyspace if your office should sit beside tasks and documents. Consider WorkAdventure for a custom world with a self-hosting path, or Kumospace for a hosted spatial office. Validate the fit with one real team workflow.
Are self-hosted virtual offices open source?
Not necessarily. Polybase is commercial software. WorkAdventure publishes its code under AGPL v3 with the Commons Clause, which its publisher says is not OSI-compliant. Review the licence and any separate administration features.
Does proximity audio make a conversation private?
Proximity controls who participates in a conversation; privacy also depends on room controls, permissions and the selected setup. Check the participant list and test boundaries before discussing sensitive information.
Can Polyspace import our Gather map?
There is no automated Gather map importer. Start with a small layout in the space editor, recreate essential rooms and links, and test with your team.
What does Polyspace cost?
For the cloud, Polyspace is a €5 per user/month add-on to Core at €10 per user/month: €15 total for Core plus Polyspace. Self-hosted and enterprise deployments use custom pricing. Other optional add-ons cost extra.
Documentation and primary sources
Features, licensing and pricing checked on 14 October 2026. Confirm the product version and plan before switching.
- Gather 1.0 and 2.0 comparison
- WorkAdventure discussion bubbles
- WorkAdventure self-hosted licence
- WorkAdventure: why its licence is not OSI-compliant
- WorkAdventure self-hosting
- Kumospace spatial and room audio
- Polyspace product features
- Polybase pricing
Product names identify the tools being compared. No endorsement is implied.
Walk through Polyspace with your team.
Book a demo to test a channel room, proximity conversation and your intended deployment. Or explore the current Polyspace product page.
Continue your research
Compare another part of your team's toolkit.
Slack
Team conversations, with a deployment you can choose.
Read the guideMicrosoft Teams
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Run team messaging on infrastructure you operate.
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