About Sharkord
Sharkord is a self-hosted communication platform that brings the most important Discord-style features to your own infrastructure. It is aimed at small groups who want voice, video, text and screen sharing with privacy, simplicity and full control over their data, and the project notes it is in an alpha stage.
Voice channels use a built-in mediasoup SFU for video and screen sharing, while text channels can be grouped into categories and include threads, replies, reactions, pins and search. Other features include direct messages, roles with per-channel permission overrides, custom emoji, mentions, invites with usage limits, file uploads with storage quotas, and a plugin SDK that extends both server and client.
Sharkord is written in TypeScript on Bun and licensed under MIT. It is distributed as a standalone binary that bundles server and client for Windows, macOS and Linux, and it can also run in Docker. On first launch it prints a secret token that grants owner access and must be kept safe. A live demo is available, and breaking changes are expected during alpha.
Key features
- Voice channels with video and screen sharing
- Text channels with threads and reactions
- Direct messages between members
- Roles with per-channel permissions
- Invites with usage limits
- Plugin SDK for server and client
Good fit for
- →Private chat and voice for friends or a small team
- →Replacing Discord with self-hosted software
- →Screen sharing sessions without a third-party service
- Tags
- chat
- voice-chat
- video-chat
- screen-sharing
- self-hosted
- webrtc
- discord-alternative
- bun
- typescript
Sharkord: questions and answers
- What is Sharkord used for?
- Sharkord is a lightweight self-hosted chat server with text, voice, video and screen sharing for small groups, shipped as a single binary and currently in alpha. It is a good fit for private chat and voice for friends or a small team, replacing Discord with self-hosted software, and screen sharing sessions without a third-party service.
- Is Sharkord open source?
- Yes. Sharkord is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at Sharkord/sharkord and is written mainly in TypeScript.
- Is Sharkord free?
- Yes. Sharkord is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Sharkord?
- Yes. Sharkord can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
- What is Sharkord an alternative to?
- Sharkord is an open-source alternative to Discord, Slack, Pumble and TeamSpeak. Other open-source alternatives to Discord include Chatto, VoceChat and Mezon.
- Is Sharkord actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Sharkord was on 11 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.0.25, published on 4 September 2026. The project has 1.5k stars on GitHub.
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