Messenger Table
Attention: this page has not beed updated in a while. It is kept only for archive purposes right now.
On this page I try to shed some light on the jungle of mobile messaging apps out there. I have also written blog articles about this:
And also some talks: I focus solely on applications with automatic contact discovery here, because I want to stay close to the SMS or WhatsApp analogy. While there are valid reasons for choosing messengers with custom identifiers like XMPP (I use and recommend Conversations on Android), the barrier to reaching a large audience is much higher. For more background please see the above links.I try to keep this page up-to-date, but if you see that something is outdated or incorrect, please contact me!
Trust
Crypto | Client trust | |||||
E2EE | E2EE default | E2EE group chats | Forward secrecy | Free Software | 3rd Party audit | |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | ? | |
Telegram | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Threema | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not on E2EE | No | Yes |
Signal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | mostly | Yes |
Wire | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | mostly | Yes |
Allo | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | ? |
Kontalk | Yes | Yes | experimental | No | Yes | ? |
Currently Telegram and Kontalk are trustworthy, although both have drawbacks. Signal and Wire both have improved on their Client trust and the clients work on Google-free Android phones, now, but the builds still contain some proprietary dependencies and cannot be included in e.g. F-Droid. Once this gets solved, they would be superior choices.
Metadata and Availability
Free Software server | Federated system | Notify method | Proxy/TOR support(client) | Alternative Identifiers | |
No | No | GCM/APNS only? | No | No | |
Telegram | No | No | Poll optional | No | No |
Threema | No | No | Poll optional | No? | Custom; E-Mail |
Signal | Yes | No | WebSocket optional | No | No |
Wire | Yes | No | WebSocket optional | No | |
Allo | No | No | GCM/APNS only? | No? | No |
Kontalk | Yes | partly | Poll optional | Yes | JID |
Signal and Wire have improved greatly in this area in recent times. Both now have completely free server implementations that you can host yourself. However you would loose the ability to contact users on other instances, because there is no federation, something we really need in the long run. Kontalk has some benefits here, although its federation still has limitations, e.g. encryption doesn’t work with clients outside the official server. Wire and Threema also offer different-than-phone-IDs.
Other features
Desktop/Web-Client | Multi-Device support | Voice Message | Audio-Calls | Video-Calls | |
Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Telegram | Yes | Not for E2EE | Yes | No | No |
Threema | Experimental | ? | via plugin | No | No |
Signal | Yes | limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Wire | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Allo | No | ? | Yes | No | No |
Kontalk | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |