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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Halloy – Modern IRC client

I started working on Halloy back in 2022, with the goal of giving something back to the community I’ve been a part of for the past two decades. I wanted to create a modern, multi-platform IRC client written in Rust. Three years later, I’ve made new friends who have become core contributors, and there are now over 200 people idling in our #halloy channel on Libera. My hope is that this client will outlive me and that IRC will live on.

Halloy is a modern IRC client built in Rust that works across multiple platforms. Designed for IRC users and community members, it offers a contemporary alternative to traditional chat clients. The project began in… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1
    Halloy▲7

    IRC application written in Rust

    2023 · halloy.chat · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    Werk▲364

    Async first, all in one collaboration for remote teams

    2022 · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Hey HN – I built Dock after years of team chat frustrations as a founder. Free forever for teams up to 5. Unlimited search, unlimited history. No "upgrade to see messages older than 90 days" nonsense. Built for teams who work both async and sync/real-time when it matters. runs on SOC 2 infra, compliant, secure and in-transit and at-rest encryption, runs on Cloudflare. Early stage – would love feedback from anyone who's felt the same pain.

    Jan 2026 · getdock.io · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Easily build real-time apps that enables user collaboration

    2022 · multiplayer.dev · its alternatives →

  5. 5SB

    Find information, resources and relevant links for 2mb.codes. This domain may be for sale.

    2024 · 2mb.codes · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Scalable open source pub/sub SDK with support for RPC, JWT authentication and Kubernetes — optimized for async/await

    2016 · socketcluster.io · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    I got my start on the Internet in the very early 90s playing with, authoring in, and programming on LambdaMOO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO) and similar systems. Shared virtual social spaces, with a persistent object oriented authoring / scripting language. They can be classified as MUDs (depending on who you talk to) but the focus is social, creative / authoring, and shared programming not RPG gaming. I've always wanted to see this kind of thing modernized and further developed. Over the last 25 years or so I've worked on similar but novel & improved…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8AB
  9. 9

    Last week Cloudflare released Cap'n Web [1], a schema-free capability-based RPC protocol. I built capn-rs this week - a Rust implementation with full wire protocol compatibility. Links: GitHub: https://github.com/currentspace/capn-rs Crates: https://crates.io/crates/capnweb-server API docs: https://docs.rs/capnweb-server What's working: Wire compatibility verified via integration tests against TypeScript reference Multi-transport: HTTP batch, WebSocket, WebTransport (HTTP/3) Complete IL (intermediate language) expression evaluator…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Contribute to staab/git-chat development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Hi HN, Founder here. We built Pica, an open-source platform in Rust to enable agentic AI with three main focus areas: - Access to APIs and tools: Universal SDKs that let AI agents use thousands of external actions without blowing up your context window. - Visibility and traceability: Full audit logs of every decision/action to ensure transparency and accountability. - Alignment with human intentions: Seamless guardrails for autonomous tasks; e.g., restricting certain email actions to human approval. Why this matters: As autonomy in AI grows, we need robust solutions for trust and…

    2025 · picaos.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12HI
  13. 13
  14. 14
    RUSTWA▲36

    A Unofficial WhatsApp Web API built in Rust

    Jan 2026 · gitlab.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Sockudo▲14

    High-performance Pusher alternative in Rust

    2025 · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    About a year ago I was working on a project with mirrored Kubernetes clusters deployed across various regions. Constantly switching contexts was a big pain for me and I badly needed something more practical to work with multiple clusters, ideally simultaneously. At that time everyone was talking about Rust and I really wanted to try it out. I then found Tauri, a framework to build GUI apps with Rust + JavaScript. I was sold. I learned Rust and built the app I always wanted to use. Fast, lightweight and with the ability to connect to multiple clusters simultaneously. Fast forward to today,…

    2023 · aptakube.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I have two instances that I'd love to see HN hug to death at https://jonline.io (to which I manually deploy) and https://getj.online (which is deployed to for any commit to main on GitHub). They're both running (side by side, in their own namespaces) on a bare minimum 2GB/50GB DigitalOcean droplet using DOKS (DigitalOcean Kubernetes). The configurations are in: https://github.com/JonLatane/jonline/tree/main/deploys/k8s So far this is a solo endeavor, but with my recent CI integrations and consolidations of things within the…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    HTTP client/libcurl TUI front end in Rust, with request + key storage - PThorpe92/CuTE

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    lambdock - Modern, hyper-hackable, Wayland-native desktop dock application (C and Guile Scheme + GTK4) w/ REPL

    Aug 2026 · codeberg.org · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    This is a little project I've been working on for a while in order to better learn Python. Although IRC may not exactly be the most exciting medium, I still find it to be fun and useful, this interest lead me to writing a bot. In doing this I realized that what would actually be more interesting would be if I had a framework. There may already be such a thing, certainly there are IRC libraries, but I don't know if they're well-suited to deploying bots. At any rate if for no other reason than the fact that I am relatively new to programming and eager to learn I decided to build a framework.…

    2011 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    This is a Discord bot I made, which lets you write and evaluate Lisp code in collaborative sessions on Discord. I wrote it in a short amount of time, partly for learning purposes, but also because I found the idea exciting and it was fun to hack around. I'd be happy to get your feedback, especially on how to improve the deletion mechanism (maybe make deletion sexpr-based?). I've tried to make the README detailed enough so that it's easy to make some changes and run your own version.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22DL
  23. 23

    hi there! i’ve been working on a project called Narwhal, and I wanted to share it with the community to get some valuable feedback. what is it? Narwhal is a lightweight Pub/Sub server and protocol designed specifically for edge applications. while there are great tools out there like NATS or MQTT, i wanted to build something that prioritizes customization and extensibility. my goal was to create a system where developers can easily adapt the routing logic or message handling pipeline to fit specific edge use cases, without fighting the server's defaults. why Rust? i chose Rust because i…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24SQ

    TL;DR- Libninja will generate world-class client libraries for you, without you needing to fiddle with openapi-generator, maintain build pipelines, and so forth. If you just want Rust, reach out, and I'll create your client library at no cost, because I want to help Rust's ecosystem grow. -- Hi HN, I got into Rust in a big way about 9 months ago. While the language is quickly maturing, one large gap in the ecosystem is immature or non-existent client libraries for common API services like Plaid, Stripe, Twilio, Github, Slack, and so on. The existing openapi-generator templates create Rust…

    2022 · libninja.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →