How MikroRoom compares

Typical cost

MikroRoom is free and open source under the MIT license. No per-seat pricing, no feature gates, no time limits. You pay for the server you run it on, and that's it.

Google Meet is free for meetings up to 60 minutes. Beyond that, you need Google Workspace ($6–18/user/month). A 10-person team pays $720–2,160/year.

Zoom offers free 40-minute meetings. Pro plans start at $14.99/user/month, with Business at $19.99/user/month. A 10-person team pays $1,799–2,399/year.

Webex has similar pricing: free with 40-minute limits, then $14.50–26.95/user/month for longer meetings and features.

Whereby is free for one room (30-minute limit) with up to 100 participants, but multi-room support requires paid plans ($6.99–13.99/user/month).

Jitsi Meet is free to self-host, but running a production Jitsi server requires significant infrastructure (4+ cores, 8GB+ RAM, PostgreSQL, multiple services) and ongoing maintenance.

Privacy and data sovereignty

With MikroRoom, your video, audio, and chat never leave the peer-to-peer connections between participants (or your signaling server). There are no analytics, no telemetry, no recordings on external servers.

Google Meet routes all video through Google's infrastructure. Your meetings are subject to Google's privacy policies and data retention practices.

Zoom has faced scrutiny over encryption and privacy. While they've improved, your data still flows through Zoom's servers and is subject to their policies.

Webex (Cisco) stores meeting data on Cisco infrastructure. Enterprise plans offer some data residency options, but you're still trusting Cisco.

Whereby uses server-mediated video routing. Meeting data passes through Whereby's infrastructure in the cloud.

Jitsi Meet offers full sovereignty when self-hosted, similar to MikroRoom. The key difference is operational complexity. MikroRoom uses WebRTC P2P mesh (video flows directly between participants), while Jitsi uses an SFU architecture requiring multiple server components.

Setup and complexity

MikroRoom installs with a simple curl oneline command. No database to configure, no multiple services to orchestrate. Frontend and backend come in one package.

Google Meet, Zoom, Webex, and Whereby win on setup—sign up and you're meeting. But you're also locked into their ecosystem, their pricing changes, and their outages.

Jitsi Meet is the most complex self-hosted option. A production setup requires:

• Jitsi Videobridge (video routing)
• Jicofo (conference focus coordinator)
• Prosody (XMPP server)
• PostgreSQL database
• Nginx reverse proxy
• TURN server for NAT traversal

Setting up and maintaining these components requires DevOps expertise. MikroRoom's single-service architecture makes self-hosting accessible to developers without infrastructure experience.

Feature scope and use cases

MikroRoom does small video meetings: P2P video/audio for < 8 participants per room, in-meeting chat with replies, moderator controls, hand-raising, screen sharing, and waiting rooms. That's it. No recording, no breakout rooms, no webinar features.

If you need large meetings (50+ participants), recording, breakout rooms, or webinar features, MikroRoom is not the right tool. Google Meet, Zoom, and Webex are full enterprise platforms with extensive feature sets.

The P2P advantage: Because MikroRoom uses peer-to-peer connections, video and audio quality is often better than centralized services (lower latency, no server bottleneck). The tradeoff is a participant limit of ~8 users per meeting due to the mesh topology.

What MikroRoom does, it does well: simple setup, low latency, minimal resource usage, full data control, and zero recurring costs. It's built for teams who want straightforward video meetings without paying for features they don't use.

Architecture and connectivity

MikroRoom uses a P2P mesh topology. Video and audio flow directly between participants using WebRTC. The signaling server only coordinates connection setup—it never sees your media. This provides:

• Lower latency (direct connections)
• Better privacy (no central recording point)
• Lower server costs (minimal bandwidth usage)
• Participant limit (mesh doesn't scale beyond ~8 users)

Google Meet, Zoom, Webex, Whereby, and Jitsi use SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) architecture. Each participant sends media to a central server, which forwards it to others. This provides:

• Higher participant limits (100+)
• Features like recording and transcription
• Higher server costs and complexity
• Privacy concerns (central point sees all media)

Migration and portability

MikroRoom doesn't store meeting history or recordings by default—it's designed for real-time communication. When a meeting ends, it's gone unless participants record locally.

Moving away from MikroRoom is straightforward since it's open source and self-hosted. No data export needed, no proprietary lock-in.

Google Meet, Zoom, and Webex create lock-in through recorded meetings, integrations with calendar systems, and organizational habits. Recordings are typically stored in their clouds.

Whereby is fully cloud-based with limited export options.

Jitsi Meet is similar to MikroRoom in portability—it's open source and self-hosted. Migration between self-hosted solutions is easier since you control all the data.