Chatto

A fully-featured, real-time chat application that's easy to self-host. One binary, no external dependencies required.

What is Chatto?

Chatto is a fully-featured real-time chat application built for simplicity and scalability. It is designed to be particularly easy to self-host, starting with a single binary that includes everything you need to get started.

Key Features

Reliable real-time messaging with a familiar UI — spaces, rooms, threads, reactions, typing indicators, presence, and more
Voice and video calls with screen sharing
Highly flexible configuration and permission systems
Privacy-focused design with per-user encryption keys for straightforward GDPR-compliant data deletion
Scales from a single instance to a planet-spanning supercluster (yes, really)

See the Roadmap for a full feature list and what’s coming next.

The Stack

Single binary compiled from a Go codebase
NATS and JetStream handle both real-time delivery and data persistence — no separate database required
An embedded NATS server gets you started quickly, or connect to a dedicated NATS cluster for horizontal scaling and high availability
The Svelte web UI is served directly from the binary — no separate frontend build step needed

Optional Dependencies

Chatto provides a full chat experience with no external dependencies. For advanced features:

S3-compatible object storage — recommended for file uploads at scale
ffmpeg — required for video and GIF processing (included in the Docker image)
LiveKit — required for voice and video calls (free to self-host)

Get Started

Quick Start Get Chatto running in a few minutes.

Docker Compose Deploy with Docker Compose for production.

Standalone Binary Run Chatto as a single executable.

Kubernetes Deploy on Kubernetes with Argo Rollouts.