Ergo vs ZNC

Both are self-hosted communication - irc projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

Ergo scores 64 against ZNC's 50, putting it ahead on the strength of more recent releases. That measures project health, not feature fit — ZNC may still be the right choice if it does what you need.

	Ergo	ZNC
Health score	64/100	50/100
Commits (11 mo)	160	140
Commits (last 3 mo)	57	49
Stars	3.3k	2.1k
Latest release	5 Aug 2026	none tagged
Licence	MIT	Apache-2.0
Built with	Go, Docker	C++, deb
Typical RAM	1 GB	1 GB

Ergo

Modern IRCv3 server written in Go, combining the features of an ircd, a services framework, and a bouncer.

64/100

Steady

Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.

Maintenance 15/40

Releases 25/25

Community 12/20

Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 39% of tracked projects; popularity more than 59%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

ZNC

Advanced IRC bouncer.

50/100

Slowing

Activity has dropped noticeably. Check the repository before committing to it.

Maintenance 15/40

Releases 13/25

Community 10/20

Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 37% of tracked projects; popularity more than 50%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted communication - irc.