| 1 | # 🤖 How Eleven compares |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Where Eleven sits among the private messengers, honestly. Every pillar of |
| 4 | the Eleven model — no identifiers, end-to-end encryption, easy self-hosting, |
| 5 | a mainstream-grade app — already exists *somewhere* in this landscape. |
| 6 | Eleven's bet is the **combination**. (This page compares the *product*; |
| 7 | [comparison-infrastructure.md](comparison-infrastructure.md) compares the |
| 8 | *infrastructure* — Durable Objects, Sandstorm, Orleans, Fly — where the |
| 9 | same bet-on-the-combination story holds; and |
| 10 | [comparison-carbon.md](comparison-carbon.md) estimates what that |
| 11 | infrastructure costs the planet at scale.) |
| 12 | |
| 13 | ## At a glance |
| 14 | |
| 15 | | | Signal | Matrix / Element | SimpleX | Session | **Eleven** | |
| 16 | |---|---|---|---|---|---| |
| 17 | | End-to-end encrypted | Yes | Yes (rooms) | Yes (double ratchet) | Yes | **Yes** | |
| 18 | | Identifier required | Phone number | Username + account | None | Random Session ID | **None — invite link** | |
| 19 | | Onboarding | Install + phone verify | Pick a server, register | One-time invitation link | Generate an ID | **Click a link, you're chatting** | |
| 20 | | Server topology | Centralized, one operator | Federated homeservers | Relay queues | Community onion-routed nodes | **Many small instances + thin glue** | |
| 21 | | Self-hosting | No | Yes, but a sysadmin job | Yes (relays) | Not really | **Yes — one binary, [designed to be simple](self-hosting.md)** | |
| 22 | | What a hacked server exposes | Little (sealed sender) | Membership, timing, server addresses | Very little — no IDs to correlate | Little (onion routing) | **Ciphertext only** | |
| 23 | | Mainstream UX | Excellent | Improving, still heavy | Privacy-enthusiast | Decent | **A design goal, not a nice-to-have** | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | ## The nearest neighbours |
| 26 | |
| 27 | **[SimpleX Chat](https://simplex.chat/)** is the nearest philosophically — |
| 28 | the first messaging network with |
| 29 | [no user identifiers of any kind](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat): |
| 30 | no phone number, no username, not even a random ID. Contact happens through |
| 31 | one-time invitation links, encryption is the Signal double-ratchet, and |
| 32 | relays are self-hostable. Where we differ: SimpleX is built on |
| 33 | per-conversation [message queues](https://simplex.chat/docs/simplex.html) |
| 34 | rather than small shareable instances, and it's aimed at privacy |
| 35 | enthusiasts. Eleven aims at your family group chat. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | **[Matrix / Element](https://matrix.org/)** is the nearest architecturally — |
| 38 | genuinely federated, self-hostable, encrypted, many servers forming one |
| 39 | network. But it keeps accounts and usernames, running a homeserver is real |
| 40 | operational work, and federated rooms leak metadata: participating servers |
| 41 | see room membership, message timing, and server addresses. That's exactly |
| 42 | what "if the server got hacked, nothing on the server should expose |
| 43 | anything" rules out. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | **[Signal](https://signal.org/)** is the gold standard for audited |
| 46 | mainstream e2ee — and proof that a private messenger can feel like a normal |
| 47 | app. It's also centralized under one operator and requires a phone number, |
| 48 | which ties every conversation back to a government-issued identifier. |
| 49 | |
| 50 | **[Session](https://getsession.org/)** drops the phone number and routes |
| 51 | messages over an onion network, cutting metadata exposure. But you don't run |
| 52 | your own piece of it, and the network's incentives are tied to its token |
| 53 | rather than to its members. |
| 54 | |
| 55 | ## What only the combination gives you |
| 56 | |
| 57 | - **No sign-up and no identifier** (SimpleX has this; Signal and Matrix |
| 58 | don't) — so there's nothing to subpoena, leak, or sell. |
| 59 | - **Self-hosting as a right, made easy** (Matrix has the right, not the |
| 60 | easy) — one static binary, a €4 VPS, [ten minutes](self-hosting.md). |
| 61 | - **Small instances that still form one network** (Signal is one big |
| 62 | instance; SimpleX has no instances) — invites and chats |
| 63 | [cross servers](cross-instance-relay.md). |
| 64 | - **Ciphertext-only servers** (Matrix leaks metadata) — push and key backup |
| 65 | run as [thin, optional, replaceable glue](push-relay.md). |
| 66 | - **A mainstream app** (SimpleX and Session ask you to care about privacy |
| 67 | first) — groups, photos, reactions, replies, bots. Nothing to relearn. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | ## Sources |
| 70 | |
| 71 | - [Comparison of instant messengers (Eylenburg)](https://eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm) |
| 72 | - [Signal vs SimpleX vs Session (Cunicula, 2026)](https://cunicula.com/en/articles/encrypted-messaging-comparison) |
| 73 | - [Messenger showdown: Signal, Session, SimpleX, Matrix, XMPP, Briar (Simplified Privacy)](https://simplifiedprivacy.com/messengers/) |
| 74 | - [SimpleX platform design](https://simplex.chat/docs/simplex.html) |
| 75 | |
| 76 | *Snapshot as of July 2026 — the neighbours ship fast; corrections welcome.* |
| 77 | |
amadan