Compare
Knit vs the other ways to message offline
Five other projects, one of them no longer with us, and where Knit sits among them.
Start with the people you want to reach. Compare device support, setup, messaging features and privacy choices, then pick an app your group can use together. Knit offers nearby discovery and a phone mesh, with optional radios and Internet relays to extend existing conversations.
The FireChat page looks back at a discontinued app and explains what current options offer. The other comparisons cover projects you can explore for your group today.
The table below is the short version. Each full comparison goes further, including the parts where the other app is the better pick.
| Feature | Knit | Briar | Bitchat | Meshtastic | FireChat | Bridgefy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works with no internet | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, after you sign in once |
| Still being developed | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No, last updated 2018 | Yes |
| iPhone app | No, coming soon | No | Yes | Yes | No, discontinued | Yes |
| Works with just the phones you already have | Yes | Yes | Yes | No, each person needs a LoRa radio | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-hop mesh — messages relay beyond your own radio | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| No account, no password | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Username only | No, Google or Apple sign-in |
| Open room with everyone nearby1 | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Store & forward for offline peers | Yes | No | Yes | Router nodes only | Yes | Not documented |
| End-to-end encrypted direct & group chats | Yes | Yes | DMs yes; no named groups | DMs yes; channels share one key | 1:1 only, from 2015 | DMs only; public chat is open |
| Forward secrecy2 | Yes | Yes | Live sessions only | No | Not documented | Via the Signal protocol |
| Photos, GIFs & voice notes | Yes | Images only | Text only | No, text and location | Images only | Yes |
| On-device AI moderation | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Works over the internet3 | Yes, via optional relays | Yes, via Tor | Yes, via Nostr relays | Optional, via MQTT bridges | Yes | Only to sign in |
| Free, no ads, open source | Yes, GPLv3 | Yes | Yes, public domain | Yes, GPLv3 — radios cost extra | Was free; closed source | Free app; closed source |
- 1Knit's Nearby room is an open broadcast, plaintext by design — like talking out loud in a crowd. Direct and group chats are the sealed part. Meshtastic's default channel ships with a publicly known key, which comes to the same thing, and FireChat's public chatrooms were never encrypted at all.
- 2Knit rotates keys per block of messages, not per message, and a chat with someone on an older Knit build falls back to the previous static-key scheme, which has none. Spent keys are deleted, so mesh traffic recorded today can't be decrypted later. Meshtastic's own documentation states it does not implement forward secrecy; Bridgefy adopted the Signal protocol in 2020, and a 2022 paper found that adoption incorrectly implemented.
- 3Knit's Internet relays are opt-in and off until you add one, and they carry only existing direct and group conversations, as sealed frames the relay can't read. No accounts, no discovery, and you can run your own. They don't hide who talks to whom; Briar's Tor does. The Nearby room stays radio-only.
Knit vs Briar
Two free, open-source ways to message without servers — built on different ideas about who you're talking to.
Read the full comparisonKnit vs Bitchat
Two open-source mesh messengers that turn the crowd into the network — one runs on every phone, one goes deeper on Android.
Read the full comparisonKnit vs Meshtastic
The phones you already carry, the reach of LoRa, and how Knit brings them together.
Read the full comparisonKnit vs FireChat
FireChat proved a phone mesh could matter. It stopped being updated in 2018 — here is what it did, and where that leaves you.
Read the full comparisonKnit vs Bridgefy
Compare how Knit and Bridgefy get your group connected, from the first launch to a conversation across the crowd.
Read the full comparisonIf the hop-by-hop idea is the part you want to see, the browser demo runs it without installing anything: knock out a cell tower, then walk a message across a crowd.
Facts about the other projects come from their own documentation, and each comparison says when it was last checked. Spotted something wrong or out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.
Product names on these pages are the trademarks of their respective owners and are used only to identify the apps being compared. None of those projects is affiliated with, or has endorsed, Knit.
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