The open source Discord alternative for communities.
Simple, intentional chat for communities, without a subscription. Rooms, threads, DMs, search. Open source, free to use, free to leave.
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. 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.
Bot & AI ready
Built-in bot API with webhooks and real-time events. Bots read messages, post replies, react, manage rooms, and search (over WebSocket, no public endpoint required). Drop in OpenClaw 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 paid marketplace.
The details that matter.
Your brand
Custom name, logo, theme colors, and custom domain. Your community feels like yours, not a generic chat app.
Full-text search
Every message, every thread, fully indexed. Find a conversation from three months ago in seconds.
Rich messages
Images, PDFs, and videos inline. Share files without leaving the conversation.
Built-in moderation
Moderator roles, user bans with IP blocks, and reversible soft-delete on messages and rooms. Real moderation, not retrofitted.
Mobile-first by design
Sabha is a PWA. Install from any browser for an app icon, push notifications, and badge counts. Same URL on every device, no App Store.
Simple invites
Share an invite link or a QR code.
A place to talk, not a product to use.
Familiar by design
You shouldn't have to teach your community a new app. Sabha works the way they already chat: rooms for topics, threads for tangents, search for memory. The interface stays out of the way so the conversation can be the thing.
Small on purpose
Sabha does one thing (community chat) and refuses to do more. No marketplaces, no boost economies, no constant new features clamoring for attention. If it doesn't earn its place in your community, it doesn't ship.
Yours, not ours
Your community runs on code you can read, on a server you can move, with data you can take. Sabha is yours from the first message. If we ever stop being useful, you walk away with everything: no negotiation, no rescue mission.
It fits in a lot of places.
Hobby and interest communities.
A place that's yours, not someone else's product.
Open-source projects.
Replace your Discord with self-hosted chat under your domain and brand.
Online classrooms and cohorts.
Rooms per cohort, threads per assignment, history that doesn't expire. Hook SSO into your LMS so students land in chat already signed in.
Conferences and meetups.
Share a QR code on the big screen, people are in.
Alumni groups and private circles.
Invite-only, no public discovery, no SEO accidents.
Newsletter and creator communities.
Give your audience somewhere to talk that isn't a Substack comment section.
Start free. Grow when you're ready.
sabha.co is where you try Sabha. Sabha Cloud is your own dedicated server, fully managed. Self-host whenever you want — no lock-in.
Free shared workspace. Try every feature, switch between communities, no credit card.
- Free, no credit card
- Setup your community in minutes
- One login, switch between every community you joined like in Discord/Slack
- Unlimited members
- Unlimited message history
- 1 GB file storage
- Slack import (beta)
- Download your workspace database to self-host anytime
- Shared infrastructure
- No backups guaranteed
- No custom domain
Your own dedicated server, fully managed.
- Your dedicated server, we manage it
- Everything from sabha.co
- Storage scales with your plan
- Continuous backups
- Custom domain
- Your brand, your identity
- Multitenancy (coming soon)
- SSO with your existing login
- Managed updates & monitoring
- No ops required
MIT-licensed source. Your server, your data, your risk. Walk away with everything, anytime.
- MIT licensed, free forever
- Your server, your data
- Custom domain
- SSO with your existing login
- SQLite, no dependencies
- Docker or bare metal
- Single workspace per install
- 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?
It's chat-first. Rooms, threads, search: that's the product. No Nitro, no boosts, no marketplace of bots and emoji upsells getting in the way of the conversation. And if you don't like how we run it, take the code and host it yourself. Try that with Discord.
Is Sabha really free?
Yep. Create a workspace on sabha.co: unlimited members, unlimited history, no credit card. Every workspace gets its own SQLite database, so running one costs us almost nothing and we can keep the free tier generous. (Sabha Cloud is the paid tier where we run a dedicated server for you.)
Can I self-host Sabha?
Yep. Sabha runs on Rails, Hotwire, and SQLite. One server, no external dependencies. Drop it on a $10 VPS with Docker or bare metal. No managed Postgres, no Redis cluster, no Kubernetes. Your server, your data, your bytes.
What if I want to leave sabha.co?
Easy. Admins can download the entire workspace as a SQLite database from settings and migrate it to a self-hosted Sabha install. Same app, your server. No migration consultant, no vendor lock-in, no rescue mission.
Is there a mobile app?
Not in the App Store, and you don't need one. Sabha is a PWA. Open it on iPhone or Android, hit "Add to Home Screen", and you get an app icon, push notifications, and badge counts. 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, reading messages, posting replies, reacting, searching. Drop in the OpenClaw plugin and you've got an LLM agent in any room with a single invite URL. Or write your own. Bots are a feature, not a marketplace.
What's the difference between sabha.co and Sabha Cloud?
sabha.co is shared multi-tenant: free, instant, your workspace sits next door to thousands of others. Sabha Cloud is your own dedicated server with continuous backups, custom domain support, and no storage limits. Same app, different walls.
Can I use a custom domain on sabha.co?
Nope. sabha.co workspaces live at sabha.co/workspace_id on shared infrastructure. If you want chat.yourdomain.com, Sabha Cloud adds custom domain support, or you can self-host and run whatever DNS and TLS setup you want.
Create your community in 30 seconds.
No subscription. No lock-in. Your data is yours.