Ethora: The GetStream Alternative for Self-Hosted Chat & AI
Modular Chat & AI SDK that runs on your servers, plugs into any LLM, and ships in days, not quarters.
The honest short answer
Ethora vs Stream (GetStream): the honest short answer
Stream (GetStream) is a cloud-managed chat, feeds, video and moderation platform built for very large consumer apps, priced per monthly active user with each product metered separately. Ethora is an open-source chat and AI SDK you self-host on your own cloud or on-premises, with flat pricing and any LLM you choose.
Stay with Stream if
- You want a fully managed service and never plan to run infrastructure
- Activity feeds are core to your product
- You run at consumer scale where Stream’s edge network matters more than cost
Choose Ethora if
- Data must stay in your VPC or on-premises (healthcare, finance, public sector)
- You want one flat bill instead of four MAU meters
- You need in-app AI agents on your own LLM, not only moderation
Best for: Stream for managed consumer-scale chat with feeds; Ethora for regulated or cost-sensitive teams that want to own the stack.
Side by side
Ethora vs Stream (GetStream): capabilities at a glance
What each platform offers on the eight questions buyers ask most. Competitor facts come from the vendor’s own public pricing and product pages.
Ethora
How to read this table
Stream (GetStream) facts are taken from its own public pricing and product pages, checked 2 and 10 September 2026; “Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages do not state it. Prices change, so use our monthly Chat SDK pricing comparison for current numbers. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
The walls teams hit with GetStream
Teams move to Ethora when they hit one of these walls with GetStream.
GetStream
Cloud-managed, four products, four meters
Ethora
Self-hosted SDK, flat pricing
One SDK, six production-ready modules
Pick what your product needs. Everything ships from the same install: no stitching together separate vendors.
Chat & Docs Engine
Real-time messaging with end-to-end encryption, offline sync, read receipts, and full audit logs. Works on every platform in the SDK.
AI Bots SDK
Multi-turn in-chat agents that plug into OpenAI, Claude, or any custom LLM via webhook. Function calling, context memory, escalation to human agents.
RAG Crawler
Point it at your website or docs: it crawls, indexes, and builds a knowledge base your AI queries at inference time. No manual data prep.
Marketplace Chat SDK
Buyer-seller messaging built for Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Drop in seller presence, order-linked threads, and dispute escalation.
Chat Widget
A five-minute embed for any website. Drop in one script tag, configure your app ID, and you have a live support or AI chat window. No backend work required.
React UI Kits
Pre-built, fully themable chat components for React and React Native. Every color, font, and layout token is exposed: ship a custom UI without building it from scratch.
Your servers. Your data. Your rules.
The whole chat and AI stack (messaging, inference, moderation, audit logs) runs inside your perimeter. Not on a shared cloud, not through a vendor’s proxy: on the infrastructure your security team already controls. Teams in healthcare, fintech, government, and defense use Ethora specifically because there’s no version of “our data touches your servers”. It doesn’t. With Ethora, customer data never leaves your VPC: not for chat, not for AI inference, not for moderation.
Bring your own LLM
Ethora doesn’t bundle a proprietary AI layer or steer you toward a specific provider. You wire in whichever model fits your use case, your cost structure, or your compliance requirements, and you change it without touching the chat integration. Teams use it for:
Support deflection in-chat
AI handles tier-1 queries and escalates to a human on failure or explicit request.
RAG over your docs
Crawl your knowledge base and answer questions from it at inference time.
AI moderation
Run flagging and content review through your own model with your own rules.
No LLM lock-in. Switch in a config file. Inference stays inside your VPC: your model choice, your costs, and your data all under your control.
Compliance-ready
Ethora supports audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access controls, and the self-hosted deployment option that makes regulated-industry compliance straightforward, rather than something you negotiate into an enterprise contract.
Healthcare, fintech, and insurance teams run it in production today. The BAA is available on Enterprise. SOC 2 documentation is on request.
GDPR
EU Data Protection
CCPA
California Privacy
HIPAA
Healthcare PHI
SOC 2
Security & Availability
By the numbers
Ship faster, spend less
~95%
faster dev time vs. building from scratch
~60%
cost reduction vs. in-house build
5 min
widget install on any website
How it ships
Four steps from zero to live. Most teams are in production within a sprint.
SDKs: React, React Native, iOS (Swift), Android (Kotlin), Node.js, Python.
Save Months of Work with Ethora
Build any chat use case into your product — in hours.
Free
- Community Support
- 30 Days of Free Support
- No Credit Card Required
Small Business
- Tech Support
- SLA 99.9%
- AI Allowance
- Custom Domain
Enterprise
- 24/7 Phone Support
- Self-hosted AI
- Custom Configuration
- Dedicated / On-prem hosting
FAQ
Is Ethora a real GetStream alternative?
For teams that need self-hosted chat and AI, yes. GetStream is excellent at cloud-scale messaging for large enterprises. Ethora is built for teams that need the whole chat and AI stack on their own infrastructure, not just selected components, with flat pricing and a modular SDK that ships fast. They solve different problems for different buyers.
Can I migrate from GetStream to Ethora?
Yes. The Ethora SDK covers the same core surface: real-time messaging, channels, push notifications, file sharing, and user presence. Migration typically involves swapping the client SDK and configuring your backend deployment. Most teams complete a working migration within one sprint. Message history export depends on what you have stored on your side via Stream’s APIs.
Does Ethora support self-hosting?
Self-hosting is the default, not a feature tier. The free plan is self-hosted. The Business plan adds cloud hosting as an option alongside self-hosted. Enterprise supports dedicated cloud, private cloud, or on-premises deployment. The whole stack (messaging, AI inference, audit logging, file storage) runs inside your infrastructure perimeter.
How is Ethora’s AI different from Stream’s Vision Agents and AI Moderation?
Stream’s AI layer is primarily content moderation and multimodal Vision Agents: powerful, but aimed at a specific problem set. Ethora’s AI Bots SDK is designed for in-app chat agents that answer questions, query a knowledge base via RAG, handle support deflection, and escalate to humans. The model is yours: OpenAI, Claude, or a custom endpoint. The inference runs on your infrastructure, not a vendor’s.
Is Ethora HIPAA / GDPR / SOC 2 compliant?
Yes. Ethora ships with the technical safeguards that compliance frameworks require: encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control, immutable audit logs, and configurable data retention. GDPR and CCPA are addressed by default. HIPAA compliance, including a BAA, is available on Enterprise plans. SOC 2 documentation is available on request. Healthcare and fintech teams run it in production today.
How long does integration take?
The Chat Widget embed is minutes. A full SDK integration, with auth, custom UI via React components, and AI Bots wired up, typically takes one to three days for a developer familiar with React or React Native. Most teams are in a staging environment within a week and production within a sprint. The MCP Server option (for Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) can scaffold the initial integration automatically.
Ready to ship chat + AI on your own terms?
Free to start. Runs on your servers. No MAU meters, no LLM lock-in, no vendor access to your data.
