Communication Video / Meeting mature

BigBlueButton

Web conferencing for online education

8.0K stars 200 contributors Since 2020
Website → GitHub

Open-source virtual classroom platform with whiteboard, breakout rooms, recording, polling, shared notes, and LMS integration for educational institutions.

License
LGPL-3.0
Min RAM
4 GB
Min CPUs
4 cores
Scaling
single_node
Complexity
advanced
Performance
heavy
Self-hostable
K8s native
Offline
Pricing
fully free
Docs quality
good
Vendor lock-in
none

Use cases

  • University online lecture delivery
  • K-12 virtual classrooms with interactive whiteboard
  • Corporate training sessions with breakout rooms
  • LMS-integrated video conferencing

Anti-patterns / when NOT to use

  • Heavy resource requirements (8GB+ RAM recommended)
  • Ubuntu-only native install
  • Not designed for casual video calls
  • Complex initial setup

Replaces / alternatives to

  • Zoom for education
  • Google Classroom video

Technical specs

Language
JavaTypeScript
API type
REST
Protocols
HTTP
Deployment
apt

Community

GitHub stars 8.0K
Contributors 200
Commit frequency weekly
Plugin ecosystem none
Backing BigBlueButton
Funding community

Release

Latest version
Last release
Since 2020

Best fit

Team size
mediumenterprise
Industries
educationtraininggovernment

Tags

  • video-conferencing
  • virtual-classroom
  • whiteboard
  • breakout-rooms
  • recording
  • lms-integration
  • polling