Why V1stax
Free Forever — No Subscriptions, No Upgrades
Everything other platforms put behind a paywall ships in V1stax by default.
See everything that's shipped → full feature list
Get Started
Open the app
Head to chat.v1stax.com or download the native desktop client. No email required — just pick a username and you're in.
Open V1stax →Create your Node
A Node is your community's home. Name it, set up Spaces, organize them into categories. Takes about two minutes.
Make it yours
Invite your community with a link. Set up roles, permissions, and custom emoji — upload a wiki, enable the activity dashboard. All free, no upgrades.
Roadmap
Node sidebar ordering — drag-to-reorder your Node list. Order persists per account across all devices and sessions.
Granular permission system — ~20 discrete per-role permissions (send messages, manage messages, kick members, etc.), per-channel permission overwrites per role or per member, and @role mentions that ping everyone with that role.
Space management — channel topics shown in the chat header, per-channel slow mode (cooldown from 1 second to 6 hours) with live countdown in the input, and @here to ping only online members.
Node tools & focus — Node wiki (markdown pages per community), activity dashboard (message volume, top spaces, top members), thread inbox (all threads you've participated in), focus mode (dim spaces with no mentions), advanced search filters (by user, date range, file type), and jump-to-message from reply quotes.
End-to-end encrypted DMs — ECDH P-256 key exchange, AES-256-GCM message encryption, PBKDF2 private key wrapping, per-file attachment encryption, silent rollout with plaintext fallback for peers who haven't upgraded. Keys never leave your device.
E2EE health monitor & lock badge — live encryption status indicator in every 1:1 DM header (green when active, amber when session expired), hover tooltip, click-to-restore password flow, and a background health monitor that runs every 5 minutes and on tab focus to detect and surface failures automatically.
Native iOS and Android app. Full feature parity with desktop — voice, calls, notifications, file uploads — without the limitations of a mobile browser tab.
Docker Compose, Fly.io, Railway, and VPS guides so anyone can run a full V1stax instance in minutes — not just developers.
Full source code published to GitHub. Public contributions and self-hosting guides follow the release.
Why isn't it public yet? The codebase is under active rapid development — publishing too early would mean community forks diverging against a moving target. The AGPL-3.0 license is already locked in: the moment it ships, anyone who modifies and hosts a copy must share their changes. You can't be trapped — structurally.
Download V1stax
Native desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
System tray, OS notifications, silent auto-updates.
Most chat apps install at 350–420 MB because they bundle a full browser. V1stax uses your OS's native WebView — no bundled Chromium.
No download? Use the web app →