Your community's chat.
Yours to keep.
Community chat you own.
Tyto is a free, open-source chat platform you run on your own server — channels, threads, voice, search, moderation, and built-in EU-compliance tooling. No seats, no tiers, no lock-in.
Self-hosted & private
Runs on your infrastructure. Nothing phones home; every byte stays on your server.
Real-time & rich
Live messages, presence, typing, voice channels, threads, reactions and search.
Moderation & compliance
Roles, reports, appeals, retention and legal tooling — safety built in, not bolted on.
Free forever
The whole product under the MIT license. No paywalls, no feature gates, ever.
A complete chat platform
Feature parity with the tools you know — without the subscription or the surveillance.
- Channels & sections
- Threads — channels & DMs
- Direct messages
- Reactions — Unicode + custom emoji
- Pins, edits & history
- Permalinks & embeds
- Live updates — SSE
- Presence — online / away / DND
- Typing indicators
- Voice channels — LiveKit
- Video & screen-share
- Full-text search
- Public & private servers
- Invite-only communities
- Roles & moderators
- User groups
- Per-channel access
- Favorites & hidden
- Warn / timeout / ban
- Server-wide bans
- Content reports — DSA
- Statement of reasons
- Appeals
- Moderation log
- Registration anti-spam — opt-in
- Per-channel levels
- Community mute
- Desktop notifications
- Web Push
- Email digest
- Smart coalescing
- 6-language i18n
- Admin console
- Webhooks
- API keys — PATs
- REST API — JSON-LD
- GDPR export & erasure
Always free. Always open.
Named after the barn owl
Tyto is the barn owl's genus — in Scottish and Celtic lore the owl is the Cailleach's bird, a messenger between worlds that sees the hidden and hears the unspoken; a barn owl over the door was kept as a ward of good fortune. A fitting patron for a messenger that lives under your own roof.
Try the public instance
A Tyto server runs at client.tyto.chat. Jump in, or spin up your own in minutes with the quick start.