cd ~
$ cat ~/compare.md Measured

How Kursal compares

Same goal as the best private messengers. Without the servers, accounts, or trust in a company.

KursalSignalWhatsAppDiscordMatrixSMS
yes yes yes no yes no
Open source yes yes no no yes no
yes no no no yes no
yes no no no partial no
partial partial no no partial no
Not owned by Big Tech yes yes no no yes no
also worth knowing
Run your own relay yes no no no yes no
yes yes no no no no
yes yes yes yes yes yes
no yes yes yes yes partial
yes yes yes yes yes partial
yes yes partial partial no no
$ compare

~/benchmarks

Idle RAM usage

Each desktop app left open and idle, averaged over 30 samples per app.

Kursal
106 MB
WhatsApp
380 MB
Signal
604 MB
Discord
737 MB
↳ Kursal uses 5.4× less memory than the other three, on average. Measured on macOS, July 2026.