How to host a Jitsi Meet video-conference server anonymously (2026)

TL;DR

For a personal / community Jitsi Meet server in 2026:

• Sizing: 4 vCPU / 8 GB RAM minimum for a 10-person call; 8 vCPU / 16 GB for 50+ people; bandwidth-bound at scale.
• Best providers: HostHatch (high bandwidth tiers), FlokiNET, AbeloHost (NL DC for low EU latency).
• Install: official Debian / Ubuntu packages or Docker. ~30 minutes setup.
• Federation: Jitsi doesn’t federate — your server is its own island.

Why self-host Jitsi

Jitsi is the leading open-source video conferencing platform. Self-hosting gives you:

• No external party in the call signal path — the meet.jit.si free server sees your traffic.
• Custom branding / configuration for your community.
• Privacy from US-based defaults — official Jitsi infrastructure is US-headquartered.
• No call-length limits or other Zoom / Teams pricing tier nonsense.

Sizing

Jitsi’s bandwidth and CPU requirements scale with call participants × video resolution. Approximate guidelines for the JVB (Jitsi Video Bridge) tier:

Bandwidth is the binding constraint at scale. Pick a host with unmetered ports rather than metered transfer if you expect more than occasional use.

Step-by-step

1. Provision

Pick a host with high bandwidth allowance:

• HostHatch IS — 4-8 GB RAM tier, generous transfer.
• FlokiNET — explicit AUP, multi-juris failover.
• AbeloHost — NL datacenter for EU low-latency.

2. Install Jitsi (Debian / Ubuntu)

# Install dependencies
sudo apt install -y curl gnupg2 nginx-full

# Add Jitsi repository
curl https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb https://download.jitsi.org stable/' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list
sudo apt update

# Install Jitsi Meet
sudo apt install -y jitsi-meet

The installer prompts for:

• Hostname (e.g. meet.yourdomain.com).
• SSL certificate option (Let’s Encrypt — recommended).

3. Lock down to authenticated users

By default, anyone who knows your domain can create and join rooms. To restrict:

# Configure Prosody for authenticated room creation
sudo nano /etc/prosody/conf.avail/meet.yourdomain.com.cfg.lua

Change authentication = "anonymous" to authentication = "internal_hashed", and add:

VirtualHost "guest.meet.yourdomain.com"
    authentication = "anonymous"
    c2s_require_encryption = false

Then in /etc/jitsi/meet/meet.yourdomain.com-config.js:

var config = {
    // ...
    hosts: {
        domain: 'meet.yourdomain.com',
        anonymousdomain: 'guest.meet.yourdomain.com',
        // ...
    },
    // ...
};

Create users with sudo prosodyctl register USERNAME meet.yourdomain.com PASSWORD.

4. Restart services

sudo systemctl restart prosody jicofo jitsi-videobridge2

5. End-to-end encryption (optional)

Jitsi supports E2EE for calls of ≤20 participants. Enabled per-call via the UI; doesn’t require server config beyond the standard install.

Anonymity considerations

• Server logs: Jitsi logs are minimal but exist. The host can inspect them.
• Recording: avoid recording on the server; use client-side recording.
• Phone numbers: don’t enable the JIBRI dial-in feature unless you trust the upstream phone provider.
• Subdomain: use a privacy-protected gTLD domain registered through Njalla.

Cost

For comparison: Zoom Pro is $15/user/month; Google Meet is bundled with Workspace ($6+/user/month). A self-hosted Jitsi serves your entire team / family / community at flat cost.

Related

• Buying an anonymous VPS with Monero
• How to host Nextcloud anonymously
• How to host a Matrix server anonymously