Google Meet vs Jitsi Meet

A self-hosted Jitsi Meet deployment is a set of cooperating services, and the first decision is how much of that set you need. The web front end serves the browser app, Prosody acts as the XMPP server that handles signaling and user sessions, and Jicofo (the conference focus) allocates each conference to a media router. The media itself flows through Jitsi Videobridge, the component that carries audio and video between participants. Jibri, which records and streams meetings, and Jigasi, which bridges SIP telephone callers, are optional. Leave them out at first and add them only when a recording or dial-in requirement appears in your scope.

The official distribution supports two install paths. The Docker setup runs the web, prosody, jicofo, jvb, jigasi and jibri services as separate containers, configured through a .env file, and since stable-11146 those containers run rootless with read-only filesystems, which is a useful baseline for a security review. The Debian and Ubuntu packages suit teams that prefer host-level administration. Confirm the current supported operating system versions in the Debian and Ubuntu quick start before you pick a base image, because the list changes between releases. Plan for HTTPS from the first day, since Jitsi's guidance states it is necessary for multimedia to work, and self-signed certificates cause problems, especially on mobile clients.

Scaling is where the cost model differs most from Google Meet. Jitsi Videobridges scale horizontally, so capacity grows by adding bridges instead of buying a larger central server, and the default install is already set up for that. Each bridge needs its own CPU and memory, and the central server stays comparatively small. Ask your architect to size the bridges against your peak concurrent participants and the bandwidth at each site, then test with a realistic meeting load before go-live. Recording through Jibri needs its own capacity planning, because each recording session consumes resources that a plain meeting does not.

The Jitsi Meet software is free under Apache 2.0, so the spend sits in the infrastructure and the people who run it. The central server runs the web front end, Prosody, Jicofo and the rest of the control plane, and each Jitsi Videobridge carries the media. The Jitsi scalable setup guide suggests a 4 CPU, 8 GB machine for the central server and 4 or 8 CPU with 8 GB RAM for each videobridge, and it notes that the default install is already configured to add bridges horizontally. Those are recurring compute costs, billed either as cloud instances or as hardware you depreciate in your own data center. Ask your provider or infrastructure team to price one central server and enough bridges for your peak concurrent participants, then add a spare bridge for failover and maintenance windows.

Bandwidth and storage are the costs most often underestimated. Video traffic from every participant passes through a bridge, so egress charges or uplink capacity scale with meeting size and hours of use, and you should confirm the figures with your hosting provider's transfer pricing. Recordings made with Jibri are written to disk on a Jibri host and then need a retention policy, backup and eventually cold storage. Jibri also needs its own capacity, since each concurrent recording consumes CPU. TLS certificates are a small line item, but the Jitsi handbook states that HTTPS with a proper domain certificate is necessary for audio and video to work, so budget for a managed certificate process and its renewal.

The largest cost is usually staff time. Someone must patch the containers or packages, track releases such as the stable build tags published on the jitsi-meet repository, monitor bridge load and watch for certificate expiry. Teams should estimate that effort in their own change calendar rather than trust a generic figure, and should decide whether in-house staff or a support retainer will carry it. Google Meet's cost is not a separate line item for most organizations, because it is bundled into Workspace licensing, so the comparison is about whether removing Meet from your Workspace edition would actually lower spend. Ask any implementation partner for a written scope listing infrastructure, monitoring, upgrades and support as separate lines, so you can compare the recurring total with your current Workspace cost.

Start by confirming what your current Google Workspace edition actually gives you, because that sets the baseline the Jitsi pilot has to beat. Ask your Google account team for the current participant limit, recording behavior, and whether recordings are saved to Drive, and get the answers in writing for your specific edition and region. Then confirm which Meet features your users rely on daily, such as breakout rooms, live captions, or Calendar-integrated links, and list each one as either needed on day one, replaceable, or accepted as a loss. This list is the most useful artifact you will produce before committing, because it turns a general comparison into a decision about your own meetings.

Run a pilot of Jitsi Meet in a staging environment that matches your intended production layout, with HTTPS on a proper domain certificate, since the Jitsi handbook states that HTTPS is necessary for audio and video to work. Use the pilot to test the authentication model you expect to run (JWT tokens are the handbook's recommended approach, and the older secure domain method is marked deprecated for new installations), and to test recording through Jibri if you need it. Measure bandwidth and CPU load with meeting sizes your organization really holds, including a large all-hands and a cross-office session. Record the videobridge utilization, the outbound bandwidth per participant, and any drop in quality at the sizes you care about, then compare those numbers against your own network and hardware budget. Ask your infrastructure team to confirm the port and firewall requirements against your data center or cloud network before the pilot starts.

Finally, check identity and compliance needs against the pilot results. Confirm whether your directory and single sign-on design can issue the JWT tokens or work with the LDAP or Matrix options described in the Docker guide, and who owns that integration. Confirm with your compliance and legal teams which records, retention rules and access logs must exist for meetings, and whether Jitsi's recording output and server logs meet them. Those answers, along with the pilot measurements and the written Workspace limits, are the inputs you should bring to a scoped quote, so that any implementation partner or internal team prices the work against your actual requirements.