Galene vs Zoom Meetings

Galene is a free videoconference system with a browser client and self-hosted server, designed for lectures, conferences, and tutorials as well as meetings. Its server handles audio and video streams, multiple codecs, simulcast, and scalable video coding for VP8 and VP9. In the browser, participants can chat, share screens or windows, blur backgrounds, use activity detection and moderation, and transfer files peer to peer. The client can also broadcast audio and video from files on disk. Authentication options include usernames and passwords or token authorization, and an HTTP administrative API manages groups and users. Galene supports WHIP and lists an RTMP frontend for OBS Studio, an experimental SIP bridge, LDAP integration, and a sample third-party authorization server. Traffic is encrypted and authenticated between senders and the server, and between the server and receivers; however, media is decrypted by the server, so the system does not provide end-to-end encryption. The project estimates about 300 lecture participants per CPU core, or around 20 participants in a many-to-many meeting on one core. Its default client does not contact third-party servers or CDNs.

Zoom Meetings has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.