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Comparison · Collab
Rocket.Chat vs Passbolt
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Rocket.Chat and Passbolt — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:access-controlself-hosted
Rocket.Chat vs Passbolt: at a glance
What is Rocket.Chat?
A long RC train of dependency bumps, with the real work landing in the 8.7 branch opener.
Rocket.Chat publishes every release candidate, and the shape is consistent: the .rc.0 that opens a minor carries the substance, and every RC after it is a Meteor version bump with the occasional fix. The 8.7 line opened with server-side OAuth, PKCE and state validation under a phishing-resistant MFA banner, plus session identification in device management. The four RCs since have added one user-visible fix — seekable audio attachments.
What is Passbolt?
Passbolt collapsed the Community-to-Pro upgrade into a settings toggle, then spent the next release on sharing transparency.
Three releases on a roughly monthly cadence, each named after a song. 5.12 took the Safari extension out of beta so it stands level with Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and added a PIN code resource type. 5.13 built on the 5.12 codebase unification to let administrators switch between Community and Pro editions from organisation settings, with no separate environment or manual migration. 5.14 added explicit confirmation dialogs before creating items in shared folders or editing shared resources, made group members visible in access lists, and fixed an MFA policy enforcement issue.
Rocket.Chat vs Passbolt: editorial side-by-side
Rocket.Chat
6.3COLLAB
A long RC train of dependency bumps, with the real work landing in the 8.7 branch opener.
◆ Current state
Rocket.Chat publishes every release candidate, and the shape is consistent: the .rc.0 that opens a minor carries the substance, and every RC after it is a Meteor version bump with the occasional fix. The 8.7 line opened with server-side OAuth, PKCE and state validation under a phishing-resistant MFA banner, plus session identification in device management. The four RCs since have added one user-visible fix — seekable audio attachments.
◆ Where it's heading
The feature direction is enterprise and regulated deployment: phishing-resistant authentication in 8.7, attribute-based access control with an external Virtru attribute store in 8.6, federation and personal-access-token correctness fixes throughout. These are the requirements of buyers who run Rocket.Chat themselves because they cannot use a hosted competitor, and the release notes read like a queue of their procurement checklists.
◆ Prediction
Expect 8.7 to reach general availability with the OAuth rework as its headline and little added beyond it, since the RC train has been quiet since rc.0. The unified presence engine whose backend landed in 8.6 has no user-facing surface yet, making it the likeliest candidate for the next minor.
Passbolt
2.5COLLAB
Passbolt collapsed the Community-to-Pro upgrade into a settings toggle, then spent the next release on sharing transparency.
◆ Current state
Three releases on a roughly monthly cadence, each named after a song. 5.12 took the Safari extension out of beta so it stands level with Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and added a PIN code resource type. 5.13 built on the 5.12 codebase unification to let administrators switch between Community and Pro editions from organisation settings, with no separate environment or manual migration. 5.14 added explicit confirmation dialogs before creating items in shared folders or editing shared resources, made group members visible in access lists, and fixed an MFA policy enforcement issue.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads are running at once. Commercially, the friction between the open-source edition and the paid one has been engineered away — evaluation is now a toggle rather than a deployment project. Product-wise, the focus has moved from storing secrets to showing users who can actually reach them, which is where self-hosted password managers usually lose enterprise deals. Both threads point at the same buyer: an admin at an organisation already running Community and considering Pro.
◆ Prediction
The sharing-visibility work looks unfinished — expect access review or permission audit surfaces to follow — and the in-app edition switch is a natural place for licence and trial handling to appear next.
Alternatives to Rocket.Chat and Passbolt
Other Collab products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Rocket.Chat or Passbolt.
Contractbook
Contract automation grows up: admin permission maps, 2FA, and forms that do their own arithmetic.
Tana
The knowledge graph quietly turned itself into a meetings product.
Miniflux
A minimal RSS reader that made passkeys the only way in, then went back to polishing the reading experience.
Shiori
A Go bookmark manager rebuilding itself around an API — and only ever shipping release candidates.
Kavita
A self-hosted reading server that spent two releases becoming infrastructure, then paid for it with a CVE.
See all Rocket.Chat alternatives → · See all Passbolt alternatives →
Recent activity from Rocket.Chat and Passbolt
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoRocket.Chat8.7.0-rc.4: audio scrubbing fix, dependency bump
- 4d agoRocket.Chat8.7.0-rc.3: dependency bump only
- 7d agoPassbolt5.14.0: confirmation prompts before shared-folder changes
- 12d agoRocket.Chat8.7.0-rc.2: dependency bump only
- 12d agoRocket.Chat8.7.0-rc.1: dependency bump only
- 14d agoRocket.Chat8.7.0-rc.0 ⚡
- 1mo agoRocket.Chat8.6.0-rc.3: dependency bump only
- 1mo agoPassbolt5.13.0: switch between Community and Pro from settings ⚡
- 2mo agoPassbolt5.12.0: Safari extension leaves beta, PIN code resource type
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Rocket.Chat and Passbolt?
Both compete on the same themes — access-control, self-hosted — within Collab. Rocket.Chat is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 2.5), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Rocket.Chat better than Passbolt?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Rocket.Chat is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 2.5), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Rocket.Chat?
Top Rocket.Chat alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Rocket.Chat alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rocket-chat for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Passbolt?
Top Passbolt alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Passbolt alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/passbolt for the full list with editorial commentary on each.