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Open source alternatives to Zendesk

We track 6 open-source Zendesk alternatives, of which 3 currently score 70 or above on Repoly's GitHub health scale and 3 ship a Docker image. Chatwoot leads on health at 98/100 with 432 commits in the last 90 days; across all 6 projects you are choosing between AGPL-3.0, GPL-2.0, MIT and 1 other licences.

6
Alternatives
68k
Combined stars
1,346
Commits / 90 days
3
With Docker
Licence family Licence

Showing 6 of 6 tools

All 6 Zendesk alternatives, ranked by health

  • Top pick · highest health

    Chatwoot

    98 GOOD

    Customer communication platform (alternative to Intercom and Zendesk).

    ★ 37k · ⟳ today · v4.17.1 · ⊘ Proprietary

    DockerRubyK8S
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • FreeScout

    95 GOOD

    Email-based customer support application, help desk and shared mailbox (alternative to Zendesk and Help Scout).

    ★ 4.5k · ⟳ today · 1.8.240 · AGPL-3.0

    DockerPHP
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • Zammad

    60 SLOWING

    Easy to use but powerful support and ticketing system.

    ★ 5.9k · ⟳ today · AGPL-3.0

    Rubydeb
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • UVDesk

    44 SLOWING

    UVDesk community is a service oriented, event driven extensible opensource helpdesk system that can be used by your organization to provide efficient support to your clients effortlessly whichever way you imagine.

    ★ 20k · ⟳ 12 months ago · v1.1.8 · MIT

    PHP
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • Tiledesk

    41 SLOWING

    All-in-one customer engagement platform from lead-gen to post-sales, from WhatsApp to your website. With omni-channel live agents and AI-powered chatbots (alternative to Intercom, Zendesk, Tawk.to and Tidio).

    ★ 318 · ⟳ today · 1.2 · MIT

    DockerK8S
    Website ↗ Source ↗

Zendesk alternatives: common questions

What is the most maintained open source alternative to Zendesk?

Chatwoot scores highest at 98/100, with 432 commits in the last 90 days, 37k GitHub stars and its latest release (v4.17.1) published 18 days ago. Zammad has the most raw commit activity at 628 commits in 90 days.

Which Zendesk alternatives use a permissive licence?

2 of 6 are permissively licensed (MIT, Apache, BSD or similar): UVDesk (MIT), Tiledesk (MIT). 3 use copyleft licences such as GPL or AGPL, which require you to publish changes if you distribute a modified version.

Which Zendesk alternatives run in Docker?

3 of 6 publish a Docker image or Compose file: Chatwoot, FreeScout, Tiledesk. Docker support contributes 10 of the 100 available health points, because it is the clearest signal that self-hosting is a supported path rather than an afterthought.