Alternatives · 2026
6 Zoom alternatives, honestly compared.
Zoom won the pandemic and became the default verb for meetings — a separate app you schedule, link and join. But most team meetings aren't webinars: they are the same five people who were just discussing the topic in chat. And when the call ends, the decisions scatter into Slack, email and task tools that never met the meeting.
This guide compares six real alternatives for team video calls. One of them is our own product; we say so on its card and apply the same honest-caveat rule to it as to everyone else.
Five questions worth asking before you switch.
- (01)
Separate app or part of the workspace?
A standalone meetings tool means links, calendars and context switches. Calls inside the workspace start where the discussion already is.
- (02)
Can you run it on your own servers?
Most video platforms are cloud-only. If compliance needs calls on your infrastructure, the shortlist gets very short, very fast.
- (03)
What happens after the call?
Recordings, notes, tasks — where do the outcomes live? A meeting whose decisions evaporate was a voice memo, not a meeting.
- (04)
Internal standups or external events?
Daily team calls and 500-person webinars are different products wearing the same word. Pick for the meetings you actually have.
- (05)
What does the bill reward?
Per-host licences, per-tier participant caps, time limits on free plans — check how the pricing behaves when your usage grows.
The six contenders.
- 01(01)
Polybase
Our productThe sovereign team workspace
Full disclosure: Polybase is our product. Read this entry as the maker's perspective — the caveat below is as real as everyone else's.
Polybase runs WebRTC calls powered by a self-hosted LiveKit media server, encrypted in transit (DTLS-SRTP), started straight from any channel or DM — no meeting links, no separate app. Screen share, live captions, noise suppression and background blur are there, and the call chat turns any message into a tracked task in one click, because the tasks, docs and chat live in the same workspace. Self-hosting goes all the way to air-gapped: it runs fully offline; calls use a self-hosted LiveKit server.
- Best for
- Teams whose meetings are internal and constant, and organisations that want calls on infrastructure they control.
- Hosting model
- EU cloud, private VPC, or self-hosted / air-gapped (calls run through a self-hosted LiveKit server).
- Honest caveat
- No call recording today — auto summaries and transcripts are coming soon — and it is built for team calls, not 500-person webinars.
- 02(02)
LiveKit
Open-source realtime media infrastructure
LiveKit is an open-source realtime media server and SDK suite for teams building their own audio and video experiences. You run the server on your infrastructure and own the application around it — the same self-hosted foundation Polybase uses for calls.
- Best for
- Product teams that want to build a custom realtime audio or video experience on infrastructure they control.
- Hosting model
- Self-hosted open-source server.
- Honest caveat
- Infrastructure and SDKs, not a ready-made workspace: you build the meeting UI, identity, permissions and workflows, and operate the media service.
- 03(03)
Google Meet
The Google Workspace default
Google Meet is the path of least resistance for Google Workspace organisations: browser-based, wired into Gmail and Calendar, with solid quality and nothing to install. For external calls it is about as frictionless as video gets.
- Best for
- Google Workspace organisations and external-facing calls.
- Hosting model
- Google cloud only.
- Honest caveat
- No self-hosting, and the value assumes you live in Google's ecosystem — outside it, Meet is just another meeting link.
- 04(04)
Microsoft Teams
Meetings inside the Microsoft 365 bundle
Teams bundles meetings, chat and Office files under the Microsoft 365 licence most enterprises already pay for. For scheduled, calendar-driven meetings in an Outlook world, it is the default for a reason.
- Best for
- Microsoft 365 organisations that want one vendor and one bill.
- Hosting model
- Microsoft cloud only — there is no self-hosted edition.
- Honest caveat
- You inherit the whole ecosystem — licensing tiers, admin complexity — and video is one feature of a much larger product.
- 05(05)
BigBlueButton
Open-source virtual classrooms
BigBlueButton is open-source video conferencing built for education: virtual classrooms with whiteboards, breakout rooms, polls and recording, running on servers you control. Schools and universities are its home turf.
- Best for
- Schools, universities and training providers that need a self-hosted virtual classroom.
- Hosting model
- Self-hosted (open source); managed hosting available via third parties.
- Honest caveat
- Designed for teaching rather than day-to-day team standups — for ordinary team calls, its classroom tooling is more than you need.
- 06(06)
Whereby
Browser meetings with zero friction, from Norway
Whereby is a Norwegian company that made browser-based meetings pleasant: persistent room links, no downloads, no accounts for guests. As a European vendor it is a refreshing counterpoint to the US giants.
- Best for
- Client-facing calls and small teams that want zero-friction browser meetings.
- Hosting model
- SaaS only (European vendor).
- Honest caveat
- No self-hosting, and it is deliberately just meetings — chat, tasks and docs stay in the rest of your stack, and larger rooms need paid plans.
Where Polybase wins — and where we don't win yet.
You are reading this list on our site, so here is the part vendors usually skip.
- Calls start where the work isNo meeting links, no separate app — click the call button in the channel or DM where the discussion already lives, and teammates join from there.
- Decisions survive the callEvery call has a chat panel, and any message in it becomes a tracked task in one click. Meeting notes are Polybase docs in the same channel, searchable later.
- Video you can self-hostEU-region cloud, your own VPC, or air-gapped self-host. It runs fully offline; calls use a self-hosted LiveKit server.
- No artificial time limitsZoom's free tier caps meeting length. Polybase imposes no artificial duration limits — on your own infrastructure, your team talks as long as it needs.
- Plain pricingCalls are part of Core at €10 per user/month, alongside chat, tasks and automation — not a separate per-host meetings licence.
- RecordingPolybase does not record calls today; automatic call summaries, action items and transcripts are coming soon. If recording is a hard requirement, we are not the right answer yet.
- Webinar scalePolybase is built for team calls and standups, not 500-person webinars or large external events — Zoom keeps the edge there.
- CertificationsNot certified yet — SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are on our roadmap. We answer security questionnaires and architecture questions today.
- Enterprise sign-onSSO/SAML/SCIM are on the roadmap; today sign-in is email/password and magic links.
- Native appsDesktop and mobile apps are available. You can also use the web app or installable PWA, and calls run in any modern browser.
Choosing a Zoom alternative.
It depends on your binding constraint. Free and open source: LiveKit. Self-hosted classrooms: BigBlueButton. Already on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365: Meet or Teams. Zero-friction browser rooms from a European vendor: Whereby. Meetings inside the workspace, next to chat, tasks and docs: that is the case Polybase is built for — we're biased, so read the side-by-side comparison too.
LiveKit and BigBlueButton are open source and fully self-hostable. Polybase self-hosts too — including air-gapped setups, where calls use a self-hosted LiveKit server and the entire deployment runs offline. Zoom, Meet, Teams and Whereby are cloud-only in practice.
No — call recording is not available in Polybase today; automatic call summaries, action items and transcripts are coming soon. What exists now: the in-call chat turns any message into a tracked task in one click, and meeting notes live as docs in the same channel. If recording is a hard requirement, Zoom or a self-hosted BigBlueButton is the honest answer for now.
Polybase is designed for team collaboration — standups, project calls, pair sessions — not 500-person webinars. Many teams run daily meetings in Polybase and keep a webinar tool for large external events. For the meetings that happen every day, the integrated context wins.
Calls are included in Polybase Core at €10 per user/month, together with chat, tasks, drive and automation. There are no artificial call duration limits, and no separate per-host meetings licence. Whether it beats your Zoom bill depends on what else it replaces — a demo walks through your actual stack.
See Polybase next to Zoom, feature by feature.
Book a 30-minute demo and we'll show a call started from a channel, ending in tasks — or start with the detailed side-by-side comparison.
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