The open source Discord alternative for communities.
Sabha is simple, intentional chat for communities that value conversation over noise. Rooms, threads, DMs, search. That's the product.
Community chat is broken.
Discord buries conversations in an unindexed void. Slack charges per seat. Group chats are chaos. You need something that respects your community and your attention.
Discord
Conversations disappear. Nothing is searchable. Bots, boosts, Nitro upsells. Your community becomes noise.
Slack
Per-seat pricing. 90-day message limits on free plans. Built for work, not community. Expensive lock-in.
Mattermost / Rocket.Chat
Enterprise tools cosplaying as community platforms. Kubernetes deployments. Twelve environment variables. Overkill.
Everything your community needs. Nothing it doesn't.
Rooms for every topic
Create rooms for announcements, help, introductions, or anything your community talks about. Each room is a focused space — not a firehose.
Threads by default
Every conversation can become a thread. Side discussions stay organized, not scattered. Your main room stays clean. Depth without chaos.
Full-text search across everything
Every message, every thread, every room — fully indexed and searchable. Find that conversation from three months ago in seconds. Your community's knowledge doesn't disappear.
The details that matter.
Mobile-first
PWA with push notifications. Works on every device. No app store required.
Rich messages
Images, PDFs, and videos inline. Share files without leaving the conversation.
Your brand
Custom name, logo, and theme colors. Your community feels like yours, not a generic chat app.
Simple invites
Share a link. People join. Simple email and join the community. No friction.
Bot & AI ready
Built-in bot API with webhooks and room access. Compatible with OpenClaw agents out of the box. Add AI to your community, not complexity.
Open source
Read the code, fix bugs, contribute back. Export your data anytime. No lock-in, ever.
Pick how you want to run Sabha.
Same app, different wrappers. The difference is who handles the infrastructure.
Sign up and start talking. We handle everything.
- Setup your community in minutes
- Switch between communities like Slack or Discord
- Unlimited members
- Unlimited message history
- 1 GB file storage
- Shared infrastructure
- No backups guaranteed
- No custom domain
- Slack import
- Data export anytime
Your own dedicated server. We run it for you.
- Everything from sabha.co
- Dedicated server
- No storage limits
- Continuous backups
- Custom domain
- Your brand, your identity
- Managed updates & monitoring
- No ops required
Deploy on your own server. You own every byte. Your responsibility.
- MIT Licensed
- Your server, your data
- Custom domain
- SQLite, no dependencies
- Docker or bare metal
- You pay for your server
- You are responsible for backups, security, and maintenance
Built on Campfire,
By 37signals.
Sabha isn't built from scratch. It's built on Campfire, the team chat created by 37signals — the company behind Basecamp, HEY, and Ruby on Rails. That means you get a decade of opinionated product thinking baked into every interaction: simplicity over feature bloat, speed over spectacle, calm over chaos.
Common questions.
How is Sabha different from Discord?
Sabha is a minimal, chat-first alternative to Discord — rooms, threads, and search, nothing else. Customize the branding, self-host it, or bring your own domain. Your community feels like yours, not a tenant on someone else's platform.
Is Sabha really free?
Yes. Create a community on sabha.co for free — unlimited members, unlimited message history, no credit card. It's possible because every community runs on its own separate SQLite database, so hosting one is cheap and we can keep the free tier generous. Sabha Cloud is the paid version where we take care of hosting and maintaining the server for you.
Can I self-host Sabha?
Yes. Sabha runs on Ruby on Rails, Hotwire, and SQLite — one server, no external dependencies. Deploy with Docker or bare metal on a $5 VPS. No managed database, no Kubernetes. You own every byte of data.
Is there a mobile app?
Sabha is a PWA — install it from your phone's browser on iOS or Android and you get an app icon, push notifications, and badge counts. No App Store queue, no separate download. Same URL, same app, every device.
How do I add AI bots to my community?
Every workspace ships with a full bot API — real-time events over WebSocket or webhooks, message reading, reactions, search, and thread replies. Drop in the OpenClaw plugin to put an LLM agent in any room with a single invite URL, or write your own. Bots are a first-class feature, not a marketplace.
What's the difference between sabha.co and Sabha Cloud?
sabha.co is shared multi-tenant hosting — free, instant setup. Sabha Cloud gives you a dedicated server with continuous backups, custom domain support, and no storage limits. Think of sabha.co as shared hosting and Sabha Cloud as your own private server — same Sabha, different walls.
Can I use a custom domain on sabha.co?
No — sabha.co workspaces live at sabha.co/yourname on shared infrastructure. If you want your community on chat.yourdomain.com, Sabha Cloud adds custom domain support, or you can self-host for full control over DNS and TLS.
Create your community in 30 seconds.
Free to use. Open source. No credit card required.
Built on Campfire by 37signals — battle-tested Rails, SQLite in production