title: Comparison of LAN messengers
text: # Comparison of LAN messengers
  
  The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable LAN messengers.
  
  ## General information
  
  Basic general information about the LAN messengers: creator/company, license/price, among others.
  
  | | Protocol | Author, creator | First public release date | Latest stable version | Cost (USD) | Software license | Programming language |
  | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
  | BeeBEEP | BeeBEEP Protocol | Marco Mastroddi | 2010 | 5.8.6 (February 13, 2023; 5 months ago (2023-02-13)) | No cost | GPL-3.0-or-later | C++ and Qt |
  | BORGChat | ? | Ionut Cioflan | 2002 | v1.0.0 b438 (March 31, 2007; 16 years ago (2007-03-31)) | No cost | Proprietary | ? |
  | Briar | Bramble Protocol | Briarproject.org | 2018 | 1.4.19 (January 4, 2023; 6 months ago (2023-01-04)) | No cost | GPL-3.0-or-later | Java |
  | iChat | Bonjour IM Protocol | Apple Inc. | 2002 | 6.0.1 (1002) (February 1, 2012; 11 years ago (2012-02-01)) | bundled with OS | Proprietary | Likely Objective-C |
  | iptux | Windows Messenger service | Jally, ManPT, others | 2008 | 0.51 (November 20, 2009; 13 years ago (2009-11-20)) | No cost | GPL-2.0-or-later | ? |
  | Miranda NG | Windows Messenger service | Roland Rabien | 2000 | 0.96.1 (June 2, 2022; 13 months ago (2022-06-02)) | No cost | GPL-2.0-or-later | C/C++ |
  | Pidgin | Bonjour IM Protocol | Mark Spencer, others | 1998 | 2.14.12 (December 31, 2022; 6 months ago (2022-12-31)) | No cost | GPL-2.0-or-later | C |
  | qTox | Tox Protocol | Tux3 | ? | 1.17.6 (March 7, 2022; 16 months ago (2022-03-07)) | No cost | GPL-3.0-or-later | C++ and Qt |
  
  ## Operating system support
  
  The operating systems the messengers can run on without emulators or compatibility layers.
  
  | Client | Windows | Mac OS | Linux | Android | iOS | BSD | Other |
  | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
  | BeeBEEP | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Raspberry OS |
  | BORGChat | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
  | Briar | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | |
  | iChat | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | |
  | iptux | | | | | | | |
  | Miranda NG | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
  | Pidgin | Yes | Yes | Yes | | | FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD | Solaris Illumos |
  | qTox | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | FreeBSD | |
  
  ## Features
  
  Information on what features each of the clients support.
  
  | | Toolkits or SDKs | Private messages | Private chat | Public chat | Message board | Encryption | File transfer | Unicode (UTF-8) | Message filtration | Graphical smileys | Message logging | Whiteboard | Terminal Service Compatibility | User base in Active Directory | Serverless (No server required) |
  | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
  | BeeBEEP | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
  | BORGChat | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
  | Briar | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
  | iChat | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
  | iptux | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
  | Miranda NG | ? | Yes | ? | ? | ? | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | Yes |
  | qTox | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
  
  Note 1: Using Apple's Bonjour protocol
  
  