Zoom

Video communication made simple and easy

4.6•337 reviews•

2.7K followers

Video communication made simple and easy

4.6•337 reviews•

2.7K followers

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Video conferencing

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Video and Voice calling

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Meeting software

Make teamwork more meaningful across hybrid teams with modern collaboration solutions.

The Best Zoom Alternatives

The best Zoom alternatives are Google Meet, Whereby, Butter Scenes, Gather Town, and LiveKit.

Google Meet

4.8 ·

Choose Google Meet if...

✓you're all-in on Google Workspace and Calendar
✓you want a simple no-frills meeting experience
✓you need live captions and noise cancellation

See details ↓

Whereby

4.9 ·

Choose Whereby if...

✓you need guests to join without downloads
✓you want a permanent room link for calls
✓you run quick client calls in the browser

See details ↓

Butter Scenes

4.9 ·

Choose Butter Scenes if...

✓you run workshops with agendas and activities
✓you want built-in breakout tasks and engagement
✓you need collaboration tools inside the room

See details ↓

Gather Town

4.8 ·

Choose Gather Town if...

✓you want a persistent virtual office for teams
✓you value spontaneous hallway-style conversations
✓you want a more social remote team vibe

See details ↓

LiveKit

5.0 ·

Choose LiveKit if...

✓you’re building a custom voice or video app
✓you need APIs and SDKs over a meeting UI
✓you want to power voice AI agents at scale

See details ↓

What to Consider

Zoom remains the default for many teams because it’s reliable, widely adopted, and covers everything from everyday meetings to larger, more structured sessions. But the alternatives landscape splits quickly by philosophy: Google Meet optimizes for a Calendar-first Workspace flow, Whereby bets on URL-only browser joining for the lowest guest friction, Butter Scenes goes all-in on workshop facilitation and in-room collaboration, Gather Town replaces “scheduled calls” with a persistent spatial office for spontaneous interaction, and LiveKit serves builders who want to embed real-time voice/video as infrastructure rather than use a standalone meeting app.

In evaluating Zoom alternatives, the key considerations were how fast guests can join, how well the tool fits existing workflows (especially Google Workspace and Slack), the depth of collaboration and facilitation features, and day-to-day reliability for audio/video and screen sharing. We also weighed scalability and accessibility (like captions), security and admin needs, and whether a product prioritizes simplicity, specialized use cases (workshops or virtual offices), or developer control via APIs.

Google Meet

Premium video meetings. Now free for everyone.

4.8 · 29 reviews

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Google Meet is the most seamless alternative when meetings live inside Google Calendar and the rest of Google Workspace. Scheduling, joining, and collaborating feel integrated by default, which reduces the “separate app” overhead that can come with Zoom-based workflows.

It’s a strong fit for teams that want a no-nonsense meeting experience: straightforward controls, quick join, and minimal setup for participants. For day-to-day internal meetings and lightweight client calls, that simplicity can be an advantage over heavier, feature-dense meeting stacks.

Meet also shines in practical call quality helpers like noise cancellation, plus accessibility features such as live captions. If the priority is dependable meetings that slot neatly into Gmail, Calendar, and Docs-driven collaboration, Meet often delivers the smoothest path with the fewest moving parts.

The main trade-off is that power users may miss some of the more advanced meeting and presentation controls found in Zoom, especially in specialized scenarios. But for Workspace-native teams, the convenience and consistency can outweigh the extra bells and whistles.

Best for

Best for teams standardized on Google Workspace that want fast scheduling and frictionless joins.

Standout features

✓Native Google Calendar scheduling
✓Fast join with minimal setup
✓Noise cancellation and background effects
✓Live captions for accessibility
✓Workspace-first collaboration flow

Whereby

Beautiful, simple video calls in your browser

4.9 · 17 reviews

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Whereby prioritizes the fastest possible guest experience: open a link in the browser and join. That URL-only approach is ideal when calls include clients, candidates, or interview participants who don’t want to install software or create accounts.

A standout difference from Zoom is the “room” concept, where a persistent meeting link can function like a always-available place to meet. This makes it easy to run recurring office hours, support sessions, or lightweight team syncs without constantly generating and managing new meeting details.

Whereby keeps the core meeting experience intentionally simple, with the essentials like chat and screen sharing available without a steep learning curve. For teams that value low friction over a large ecosystem of extensions and admin controls, it can feel more approachable than a traditional enterprise meeting tool.

The trade-off is that it’s not trying to match Zoom’s breadth for complex deployments or a vast add-on marketplace, and some teams may want more depth for advanced scenarios. If “click link, you’re in” is the top requirement, Whereby is purpose-built for it.

Best for

Ideal for client-facing teams that need the simplest possible browser-based joining experience.

Standout features

✓No-download, browser-first joining
✓Persistent room links
✓Simple controls for guests
✓Fast setup for recurring calls
✓Lightweight experience for quick meetings

Butter Scenes

Think Miro, Mentimeter & Pitch… but all in one flow 🔥

4.9 · 28 reviews

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Butter is built for facilitated sessions where structure and energy matter as much as video quality. Instead of recreating a workshop flow with separate tools around Zoom, Butter bakes agendas, activities, and engagement mechanics into the meeting itself.

For trainers, coaches, and workshop leaders, the ability to pre-plan a timed agenda and move a group through segments reduces facilitator overhead. Breakout tooling and task-oriented activities are designed to keep groups focused, which can feel more purpose-built than general-purpose meeting platforms.

Butter also reduces context switching by bringing collaboration tools into the room, so participants stay engaged without juggling multiple tabs. The overall experience is designed to feel less corporate and more interactive, with playful touches like reactions and sounds that support higher-energy sessions.

The trade-off is that it’s optimized for workshops over universal familiarity, so some external stakeholders may still default to requesting Zoom. When the goal is running better sessions rather than simply hosting calls, Butter is the more specialized choice.

Best for

Best for facilitators and teams running interactive workshops, trainings, and structured sessions.

Standout features

✓Timed agendas and session run-of-show
✓Workshop-first breakout room tools
✓In-room collaborative app embeds
✓Engagement features and reactions
✓Facilitator-friendly session controls

Gather Town

Spatial video-chat worlds for work and play

4.8 · 10 reviews

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Gather Town takes a fundamentally different approach from Zoom by turning video chat into a spatial, persistent environment. Instead of scheduling every interaction, teammates can move around a virtual office and start conversations naturally, which helps replicate the spontaneity of in-person work.

That “always-on” office model works well for quick questions, lightweight coworking, and maintaining team presence throughout the day. It’s often a better fit than Zoom when the real problem isn’t hosting meetings, but reducing the friction of connecting with colleagues between meetings.

Gather also supports community and culture-building by making interactions feel more human and less formal. Guests can be invited into the space for quick chats, and the environment itself can make onboarding and team rituals feel more engaging than a grid of scheduled calls.

The trade-off is that it’s a new paradigm that may not replace Zoom for formal client meetings or large, structured events. When the goal is everyday team connection and ad-hoc collaboration, Gather Town is the more distinctive alternative.

Best for

Ideal for remote-first teams that want a persistent virtual office and spontaneous collaboration.

Standout features

✓Spatial virtual office environment
✓Proximity-based spontaneous conversations
✓Always-on coworking and presence
✓Guest-friendly invites to the space
✓More social, community-driven feel

LiveKit

The open source platform for real-time communication

5.0 · 31 reviews

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LiveKit is an alternative to Zoom in the sense that it replaces the meeting app with an embeddable real-time communications layer. For teams building a product that needs voice or video inside their own UI, LiveKit provides the primitives and infrastructure rather than prescribing a meeting experience.

Its biggest advantage over a packaged tool like Zoom is programmability: developers can design custom rooms, flows, roles, and media behavior tailored to their use case. That’s especially valuable for products where “a meeting” isn’t the product, but a feature inside a larger workflow.

LiveKit is also well suited to modern voice AI and telephony-adjacent scenarios, where real-time audio orchestration and agents are part of the application. With SDKs and prebuilt components, small teams can ship real-time features faster than building directly on raw WebRTC.

The trade-off is that it’s not a drop-in meeting app for end users, so success depends on having engineering resources and product requirements that justify building. If control, embedding, and customization matter more than a ready-made UI, LiveKit is the clearer fit.