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I've been running same ubuntu 18.04->20.04->22.04->24.04 virtual machine for matrix with synapse since 2019.
I've run it virtualized on multiple different thin clients, and in fact still do, on a t640. I've given 8gb ram and a few cores for it.
On slower cpus, such as the ones the thin clients I used before t640, loading a large room could take some time.
Few of the answers given were concrete. So here's my take.
I am able to run singleuser Continuwuity on a 8GB RAM Pi machine with 4 cores, and join many large rooms (around >=1000 users, although the number of homeservers in the room is a more suitable metric). It would use around 2GB RAM, but you can tune it for less (basically reduce cache values, but ask in the room for more advice).
After a few months the database hovers at around 2GB, because the database uses zstd compression by default. It's not anyhow a major problem like Synapse, just don't use HDD for storage and you should be fine.
For best experience, I also selfhost a dedicated caching resolver (unbound) for continuwuity. That takes like a few hundred more MBs of memory.
Given the fact you'd like to play around with it, a mid-tier VM/VPS (2CPU, 2GB RAM, 20GB SSD) is a reasonable starting choice. For a non-federating server, it can take a lot less resource than this.
Thanks for the detailed response! Those specs are very close to what I ended up getting a Synapse server running on. I would like to try getting Continuwuity going next and compare.
Follow up question for voice/video servers in general.
If I want to host a server that allows video calls, do I need GPU hardware acceleration?
I have ran Synapse natively on 1 CPU 1GB RAM VPS for years. But it fills up a lot of disk space, eapecially with larger rooms, so get at least 100GB? (I had 20GB on my VPS, and with 4 regular users, was using up 15GB)
If you are looking at (new) official ESS Community, they recommend 2 CPU, 2GB RAM minimum for Kubernetes.
You can set it to use object storage instead, much cheaper
Could you expound on what you mean, or how to go about it? Links to documentation would be appreciated.
I'm not sure your level of understanding of cloud infrastructure, so let me know if you need me to go into more detail. Disk storage, like what is attached to a VPS/VM is very expensive, and it's the 100GB drive you have attached. What is much cheaper is object/blob storage, known in AWS and most cloud providers as S3. This is far far cheaper for many reasons.
Matrix (and really I should say Synapse, what I use) can be configured to save images, photos, uploads, etc to save to a blob storage "bucket" instead of disk. So you can lower your disk from 100 down to something lower because your data is stored in blob storage (fully encrypted). For synapse, the module you need is here: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse-s3-storage-provider
Cheers, I appreciate you taking the time to write it out. I'm definitely no pro but I'm on my way to learning this stuff. I've heard of S3 but never used it. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but it just sounds like dedicated cloud storage, maybe that has been optimized for efficiency?
Where I'm at right now is considering using my own storage. I have a lot of platter space, which yes yes I know, that is far from ideal but I was going to try it out and see just how bad the performance was. I'm aiming to host for a pretty small community (>50, probably even >25).
If you're running locally on your own system then yes you can use your own. You can use something like MinIO or Garage to self-host an S3 bucket, and then point Matrix to that
Could you explain what makes an S3 bucket better suited than the default storage scheme? No pressure if not, you've already been helpful!
Basically for a cloud provider s3 storage is just any storage. It's not a disk that needs to be high availability with programs reading and writing to it with an OS on top, its just blobs of data. Images, video, isos, whatever. Its meant for access that is lower than what a VM would need for an active program.
For matrix this is ideal for its content. An image uploaded will be read a fee dozen times, and then less and less until eventually it isn't really needed ever unless someone scrolls and scrolls up.
So for hosting, if you store that on a disk you're saying "this is critical to the operation of the software and must be highly available and optimized for vms reading and writing to it.". Think like m.2 ssds. Blob storage then analogous to us home labbers to throwing it on a giant nas. Its there, may take a bit to load, but its there.
Then s3 has classes too, where if you need your data even less you can pay even less trading off access times, you can get even better rates if you know you need it extremely infrequently, like audit logs. Tape drives are actually used quite a bit for those opt-in low access tiers because if you think about it the data storage is incredibly dense, but opening up a tape can be minutes or longer to access. No problem if you're pulling up some archive from 20 years ago.
Very interesting stuff, thanks!
I am not saying it's exactly the same but that does sound similar to what I am gonna try out. Main my first successful spin up I just have everything in a frankly small VM running on an ssd, but next I'm going to play around with mapping the crucial stuff on that ssd but putting media on my 8TB platter.
That's how I started too, so very good plan, and good way of thinking ahead. Ssd will be fast so the app will load fast for your users, and images can take a few seconds and no one will mind.
Make sure you have a solid backup plan for both
I try to always follow 3-2-1 backups!
Good practice. Good luck then! Let us know if you need anything, on matrix I'm @scrubbles:halflings.chat, feel free to DM with questions
Conduit, around 100 users, barely breaks 0% usage in a Intel i5 micro PC. RAM is around 1GB used.
Continuwuity... Don't use synapse, too bloated.
I'm eager to try out multiple things. Right now I'd settle for whichever I can get set up. The documentation for continuwuity is a little tough for me and my setup right now.
If that's hard, good luck with synapse then.
Welp, I got Synapse deployed before Continuwuity lol
Thanks, I'll probably need it! I seem to be able to follow along a little bit better with Synapse at least, and there's more troubleshooting stuff out there for it I think because it's more widely used.
This. Its not that hard to setup.
I'm struggling a bit. I got the server up and text chat is working great, but the documentation for getting voice calls working is pretty hard to follow.
My searching around has failed to find a more step by step guide for modifying the gigantic sample continuwuity.toml file. It's so unwieldy, and it feels impossible to know if there are some additional settings that need to be configured that I'm simply missing due to the length of the file.
Any tips, tricks, or guides you're willing would be appreciated!
jade-liveit-guide.continuwuity.pages.dev/calls
the call docs are being rewritten to reflect latest developments. Join the Matrix room for further help too, it's quite active these days
Join the matrix room, they like to help out.
Most of the requirements are going to be for the database, and that depends on:
I left many of the large Matrix spaces I was in, and mine is now mostly just 1:1 chats or a group chat with a handful of friends. Given that low-usage case, I can run my server on a Pi 3 with 4 GB of RAM quite comfortably. I don't do that in practice, but I do have that setup as a backup server - it periodically syncs the database from my main server - and works fine. The bottleneck there, really, is the SD card storage since I didn't want an external SSD hanging off of it.
Even when I was active in several large Matrix spaces/rooms, a USFF Optiplex with a quad core i5, 8 GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD was more than enough to run it comfortably alongside some other services like LibreTranslate.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
| XMPP | Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging |
[Thread #89 for this comm, first seen 13th Feb 2026, 15:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I'd like to set up a matrix server on my home server (or a xmpp server) but I haven't been able to figure how to do that. All the docs talk about setting up a vps with a domain name.I don't have a vps or a domain name and don't wanna have to pay monthly to a hobby. (I'm poor in a poor country)
any internet connected server should do but you will need a domain name as they're how your matrix server identifies itself to the network
Cool! Can I use a ddns like duckdns? I only use my server through a VPN so I haven't looked into hardening and security stuff to open it to the internet yet. Maybe I'll just try setting a matrix server soon. Thanks!
theoretically yeah but you might have some issues with blocklists on other servers. there are cheap domain names available if even $1/yr is an option for you https://gen.xyz/1111b
edit to add- if you buy a domain from cloudflare or any other domain registrar with an API, you can create your own dynamic DNS by running a script on your server to update the domain's DNS automatically in a similar way to duckdns. more reading available at https://github.com/ddclient/ddclient
As others have already alluded to, Matrix is a bit odd in that regard as it runs a distributed database and the resource requirements depend on how much of the matrix network is mirrored on it. A single power-user can cause huge resource use just by connecting to a lot of federated active rooms. On the other hand a server that is mostly used as a private family chat can run on a modern RasberryPI without much problems.
Synapse or Conduwinity etc. makes little difference in praxis as both need to do the same database merging operations.
I do appreciate that, but even a starting point would be nice.
Starting point based on what? Do you plan to use it personally to join many large channels from FOSS projects? If so, you need to plan for a relativrly beefy VPS, like 4 core, 8gb ram, 100gb+ ssd storage.
But for small private chats with no federation a cheap minimum VPS can work.
If you want my personal recommendation I would avoid hosting Matrix. A well federated server is costly to run and not really worth the hassle and a small private chat server with bridges etc can be done equally well or better with XMPP.
I did not ask for a recommendation of if I should use or not use Matrix. I stated in OP that I want to play around with it. I will decide if it's right for my use-case.
Self hosted XMPP easy mode
This is unrelated to my question.
Yeah, true. But I saw people mentioning XMPP in the comments and thought the link might be helpful for some. It's not like it's wildly unrelated to the topic.. I stand by it.
Why the hell people keep saying Continuwity. I can’t find any software with that name. Do they mean Conduit? I’m so confused. The two words are nothing alike.
Ty. I searched on DDG and no results came up. I need to find a new search engine.
It was genuinely hard for me to find on DDG as well. It kept trying to correct to "continuity" >_>