Are there ressources that help you find the right Matrix server software in 2026?

There’s Conduit, continuwuity, Tuwunel and Synapse, but what are the differences between them? Which one should I choose when all I want is a homeserver that allows E2EE, federation (optional), voice calls, screen sharing, reliable mobile notifications and that ideally isn’t a ressource hog (aka what people say about Synapse)?

  • stratself@lemdro.idEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago
    • E2EE: all servers support it
    • Federation: this is where most of the resource hog is. If you disable it you can use anything. I enable it and use continuwuity.
    • Voice calls/screen shares: requires extra integration with Element Call + Livekit
    • Mobile notifs: requires integrating with ntfy or some other UnifiedPush service. Or download Element X from Play Store and use Google’s push services

    Edit: the main differences between these servers are that Synapse is written in Python/Twisted and is known to take up huge storage space. Meanwhile all other mentioned projects are Rust based, has a shared lineage, are usually more efficient with storage and ops, though are more focused on a smaller user size and doesn’t yet have advanced Synapse features

    • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
      1·
      2 days ago

      Those "advanced Synapse features are what the question is, IMO. I set up a server the other day and went with Tuwunel because I couldn’t figure out what the mysterious missing features actually were.

      • stratself@lemdro.idEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I’m using Continuwuity.org (also a Rust-based server and forked from the same former project as Tuwunel) so I’ll name a few that this one lacks:

        • Synapse Admin UI (helps a lot in large server setups)
        • Ability to purge rooms and some history (Rust servers use rocksdb with high compaction, so not a high priority for them)
        • Matrix Authentication Service (aka next-gen OIDC-based authn)
        • Ability to become a notary server (maintain other servers’ signing keys for faster retrieval by the public)
        • More niceties implemented for Element Call
        • More niceties implemented for encryption

        I don’t think anything except for maybe OIDC would be really needed for a small-scale homeserver, but they do lack them. For me the resource efficiency, storage savings, and ease of maintenance is definitely a larger factor in choosing the server implementation

        • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
          2·
          2 days ago

          Thanks for that overview, I really couldn’t figure out what I was missing. I’ve got chat and voice working, for my tiny instance that should be enough.