River built on Freenet

Group chat nobody owns.

River feels familiar, like Signal or WhatsApp. But it runs on Freenet, a global network nobody controls, with no River backend behind it.

No account. No phone number. No one in the middle. Just you.

Open the live official room in your browser and see it working. The demo runs on a peer we host; install Freenet when you want your own.

Try River in your browser Install Freenet

Freenet installs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. No mobile app yet.

  • No signup
  • Free and open source
River — running on your Freenet peer
A live River chat room, the Freenet room, with a room list, messages and a member list

How it works

Wait, no servers?

Most chat apps send your messages to servers a company runs. River sends them to Freenet, a network made of its users' own computers. There is no River backend: each room lives on the network itself, so it keeps working when the person who made it goes offline, and no company runs a River server to shut down, snoop on, or bill.

A normal chat app
your browser→ a company's servers→ their database
River
your browser→ Freenet a network nobody operates for River

Chat that no one owns

The things that make River different are the things it leaves out.

No backend

Every room lives on Freenet, hosted by the network's own peers. River has no backend for anyone to run, pay for, or take down.

No account

No sign-up, no phone number, no email. Your identity is a key on your device, not a row in someone's database.

Encrypted rooms

Private rooms are end-to-end encrypted, and every message is signed, so any peer can host a room without being able to forge or read it.

Stays up without you

Your room doesn't go offline when you do: while other members use it, their peers keep it available. As demand for a room grows, more peers host it, so more demand adds capacity rather than a bigger hosting bill.

Getting in

You install Freenet, not River

River isn't a separate app to download. You install Freenet once, and any number of apps, River included, run on top of it and open right in your browser.

  1. 1

    Install Freenet

    A small background app runs a Freenet peer on your machine. River and every other Freenet app run on top of it.

  2. 2

    Click an invite

    Grab a free invite to the official room, no friend needed, or use one a friend sent you. Rooms are invite-only, so you always know who let someone in.

  3. 3

    You're in the room

    River opens in your browser. Create your own rooms and share their invite links the same way.

Install Freenet & Join River Try it in your browser first

Why not Signal, WhatsApp, or Matrix?

Everyone else runs on servers someone controls

Any single operator can be pressured, subpoenaed, breached, or decide to cut you off. It doesn't take bad intent, just one point everyone has to trust. River has none.

WhatsAppEncrypted, but it runs on Meta's servers and identifies you by your phone number.
SignalExcellent encryption, run by a nonprofit. But it still runs on central servers, and needs a phone number to sign up.
Discord, SlackA company's servers, which it can read.
MatrixHomeservers, each with an admin in charge.
RiverRuns on Freenet, a network no one controls.

Features

The essentials

Real-time group chatLive rooms that sync across every member as messages arrive.
Public & private roomsPublic rooms anyone can read, or private rooms only members can decrypt.
One-click invite linksShare a link; it opens River and joins the recipient to the room.
Invitation-tree moderationIf someone you invited causes trouble, ban them and everyone they brought in, in one click.
Command-line clientriverctl drives rooms from a script, bots and agents included.

Privacy by design

No middleman to leak

Privacy in River isn't a mode you switch on. It's what's left when you remove the company, the account, and the server.

No central server to subpoena or breach.Rooms live on the network; there's no company database to hand over or hack.
No phone number tied to your identity.You never hand over a number or an email to sign up.
End-to-end encryption on private rooms.Only members can read them, not the peers hosting the data.
Open source and auditable.No blockchain, no token, no coins. Just code you can read on GitHub.

Private rooms hide content, not shape: peers can still see that a room exists and roughly how active it is. If your threat model needs to hide that too, River alone isn't enough yet.

Straight talk

Where River is today

River and Freenet are alpha. Here's what works now and what to expect, so nothing surprises you after you install.

Works today

  • Join the live official room
  • Create your own rooms
  • Public rooms, and end-to-end encrypted private rooms
  • One-click invite links
  • Command-line client (riverctl)

Still alpha

  • Installing Freenet needs a desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux); no mobile app yet
  • The in-browser demo runs on a peer we host, so it is centralized; install Freenet to run your own
  • Your Freenet peer sends diagnostic telemetry (peer activity, general system info) to help debug the network
  • Metadata isn't hidden: whether a room exists, its size, and message timing are observable
  • Not for sensitive communications yet
  • The network changes fast, and peers auto-update

Built by a nonprofit, not an ad company

River and Freenet are built by Freenet Project Inc, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. No ads, no investors, no business that runs on your data. Just open-source software that runs on a network its users own.

The developers are in the room right now

Join Freenet's developers and users in the official room. Open it in your browser, no install needed.

Join the live room Install Freenet River on GitHub