InspIRCd vs The Lounge

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.

InspIRCd scores 65 against The Lounge's 60, putting it slightly ahead on the strength of a higher commit volume and a stronger recent trend. That measures project health, not feature fit — The Lounge may still be the right choice if it does what you need.
InspIRCdThe Lounge
Health score 65/100 60/100
Commits (11 mo) 274 108
Commits (last 3 mo) 107 42
Stars 1.3k 6.3k
Latest release 26 Sept 2026 22 Jul 2026
Licence GPL-2.0 MIT
Built with C++, Docker Nodejs, Docker
Typical RAM 1 GB 1 GB

InspIRCd

Modular IRC server written in C++ for Linux, BSD, Windows, and macOS.

65/100
Steady

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

Maintenance 20/40
Releases 25/25
Community 8/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 51% of tracked projects; popularity more than 40%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 14 commits 2025-11: 22 commits 2025-12: 17 commits 2026-01: 14 commits 2026-02: 12 commits 2026-03: 43 commits 2026-04: 16 commits 2026-05: 29 commits 2026-06: 43 commits 2026-07: 22 commits 2026-08: 42 commits

The Lounge

Self-hosted web IRC client.

60/100
Steady

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

Maintenance 13/40
Releases 25/25
Community 14/20
Momentum 8/15

Commit activity more than 32% of tracked projects; popularity more than 71%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 0 commits 2025-11: 1 commits 2025-12: 1 commits 2026-01: 2 commits 2026-02: 4 commits 2026-03: 0 commits 2026-04: 52 commits 2026-05: 6 commits 2026-06: 15 commits 2026-07: 23 commits 2026-08: 4 commits

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.