Microsoft Teams vs Zulip
Microsoft Teams and Zulip are both team chat software. Microsoft Teams is a commercial product from Microsoft. Zulip is open source under Apache-2.0, with 26k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Microsoft Teams when
- Your business already pays for Microsoft 365 and wants chat and video meetings without another vendor.
- Pick Zulip when
- Your team finds Slack threads chaotic and wants organised, asynchronous conversations, self-hosted or hosted.
Side by side
Chat, meetings, calls and file collaboration built on Microsoft 365, with SharePoint behind team files and optional phone system.
A team chat server and web app built around topic-based threads within channels, with desktop and mobile clients.
The client is heavy and the chat experience is clumsier than Slack; in the EU it is now sold separately from some Microsoft 365 plans.
The topic model takes adjustment, and self-hosted push notifications go through Zulip's paid service for larger teams.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service, desktop app and mobile app
Self-hosted server, cloud service, desktop app and mobile app
Not published
Python, Django, TypeScript, PostgreSQL and Redis
Closed source, sold by Microsoft
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
20k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
26k GitHub stars
Not known
Established: started 11 years ago, latest release 12.3.
Other comparisons
More team chat apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.