Video Conferencing

BigBlueButton: the best Open Source alternative to Zoom in 2026

BigBlueButton is an education-focused video conferencing platform, with a collaborative whiteboard, breakout rooms and built-in polls, as an alternative to Zoom for educational institutions.

License LGPL-3.0 ~5k stars (estimated)Website GitHub Repository

Technical profile

License: LGPL-3.0
Category: Video Conferencing
Replaces: Zoom
Tech stack: JavaHTML5WebRTC

Preview

Public image provided by BigBlueButton on its own website.

Key features

Multi-user collaborative whiteboard
Breakout rooms
Polls and class recording

BigBlueButton vs. Zoom

Pros

The most complete option for educational use cases

Things to consider

Production installation is more complex than a simple docker-compose

Quick Docker installation guide

Copy this docker-compose.yml, adjust the example passwords and run docker compose up -d on your server. See the full step-by-step guide →

docker-compose.yml

# BigBlueButton requiere su instalador oficial (bbb-install.sh) sobre
# Ubuntu para producción; no es un docker-compose de un solo comando.
version: "3.9"
services:
  bigbluebutton:
    image: bigbluebutton/bbb-install:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - bbb_data:/var/bigbluebutton
volumes:
  bbb_data: