Are there ressources that help you find the right Matrix server software in 2026?

There’s Conduit, continuwuity, Tuwunel and Synapse, but what are the differences between them? Which one should I choose when all I want is a homeserver that allows E2EE, federation (optional), voice calls, screen sharing, reliable mobile notifications and that ideally isn’t a ressource hog (aka what people say about Synapse)?

  • IronKrill
    1·
    10 hours ago

    Those “advanced Synapse features” are what the question is, IMO. I set up a server the other day and went with Tuwunel because I couldn’t figure out what the mysterious missing features actually were.

    • stratself@lemdro.idEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      I’m using Continuwuity.org (also a Rust-based server and forked from the same former project as Tuwunel) so I’ll name a few that this one lacks:

      • Synapse Admin UI (helps a lot in large server setups)
      • Ability to purge rooms and some history (Rust servers use rocksdb with high compaction, so not a high priority for them)
      • Matrix Authentication Service (aka next-gen OIDC-based authn)
      • Ability to become a notary server (maintain other servers’ signing keys for faster retrieval by the public)
      • More niceties implemented for Element Call
      • More niceties implemented for encryption

      I don’t think anything except for maybe OIDC would be really needed for a small-scale homeserver, but they do lack them. For me the resource efficiency, storage savings, and ease of maintenance is definitely a larger factor in choosing the server implementation

      • IronKrill
        1·
        7 hours ago

        Thanks for that overview, I really couldn’t figure out what I was missing. I’ve got chat and voice working, for my tiny instance that should be enough.