Alternatives to Freenet
A peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps that run without central servers, starting with River chat. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Freenet
A peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps that run without central servers, starting with River chat.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Freenet.
Hyphanet
A peer-to-peer network for censorship-resistant, anonymous publishing and communication, formerly known as Freenet.
Hyphanet, the project formerly called Freenet, focuses on anonymous censorship-resistant publishing with plugins for sites and forums, is GPL-2.0 licensed, and runs slower than the regular web.
RetroShare
A decentralized, encrypted friend-to-friend network for chat, mail, forums, channels and file sharing.
RetroShare offers decentralized chat, mail, forums and file sharing through a friend-to-friend network on desktop and Android, but is useful only once friends join.
GNUnet
A GNU network protocol stack for building secure, decentralised and privacy-preserving peer-to-peer applications.
GNUnet is a Linux protocol stack for building metadata-resistant peer-to-peer applications, aimed at developers and researchers rather than a polished end-user app.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Freenet as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Chitchatter
A peer-to-peer chat app in the browser that is serverless, decentralized and ephemeral.
Freenet runs decentralized apps such as River chat without central servers, with a browser demo and desktop peers, though the browser version keeps your keys on the project's peer.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Quiet
A peer-to-peer team chat app that syncs messages between members' devices over Tor, with no server.
Berty
An open-source peer-to-peer messenger that works without central servers and can operate offline.
I2P
Encrypted overlay network for anonymous sites, messaging and file sharing.
IPFS Desktop
A desktop app that runs an IPFS node for sharing files over the peer-to-peer IPFS network.
Agregore
A minimal web browser that loads sites over peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS, Hypercore and BitTorrent.
Yggdrasil
An experimental, end-to-end encrypted IPv6 mesh network run as a lightweight userspace software router.
