About Stoat
This repository contains the services and libraries that power the Stoat chat service, whose earlier name Revolt still appears in the project's topics. It is a backend codebase written in Rust, using MongoDB for storage and Redis alongside it. The linked developer site documents the public API for people building on the platform.
The code is organized into core crates and server crates. The core crates cover configuration, the database implementation, file handling with S3 storage and encryption, API models, permission logic, user presence, shared result and error types, and a request coalescing service. On top of these sit a REST API server called delta and a WebSocket events server called bonfire.
Key features
- REST API server for the chat service
- WebSocket events server for real-time updates
- Permission logic as a separate crate
- S3 file storage with encryption helpers
- User presence tracking
Good fit for
- →Developers building against the Stoat API
- →Studying a Rust chat backend
- Tags
- chat
- rust
- mongodb
- redis
- revolt
- api
- backend
- websocket
Stoat: questions and answers
- What is Stoat used for?
- Stoat is the Rust backend codebase behind Stoat, formerly Revolt, an open-source chat service built on MongoDB and Redis. It is a good fit for developers building against the Stoat API and studying a Rust chat backend.
- Is Stoat open source?
- Yes. Stoat is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at stoatchat/stoatchat and is written mainly in Rust.
- Is Stoat free?
- Yes. Stoat is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available.
- Can I self-host Stoat?
- Yes. Stoat can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Stoat an alternative to?
- Stoat is an open-source alternative to Discord, Slack and TeamSpeak. Other open-source alternatives to Discord include Sharkord, Chatto and Tuwunel.
- Is Stoat actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Stoat was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.15.7, published on 25 September 2026. The project has 3.4k stars on GitHub.
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