Glossary
Chat SDK
A pre-built collection of libraries, APIs, UI components and documentation that lets developers add real-time messaging to their apps without building a chat system from scratch.
General definition
A Chat SDK (Software Development Kit) delivers ready-to-integrate messaging capabilities. Rather than constructing protocols and WebSocket connections from the ground up — a process that can take 6–12 months of engineering — teams drop in components that already work.
Core building blocks typically include:
- Native libraries across iOS, Android, React Native and web.
- Server-side infrastructure for message routing and storage.
- Pre-built UI elements like chat bubbles and typing indicators.
- Real-time protocols and REST/GraphQL APIs.
The Ethora Chat SDK
The Ethora Chat SDK is open source for React Web, React Native, iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin/Java). Unlike cloud-only competitors, it supports self-hosted deployment on AWS, Azure, GCP or on-premise infrastructure — giving you complete data ownership.
It is built on the XMPP protocol — a battle-tested, federated messaging standard powered by ejabberd — and ships with built-in AI, including RAG chat bots and LLM agents. Enterprise features cover push notifications, file sharing, message threading, presence detection and encryption.
