No-Oversight Realtime Alternative
Self-hosted chat where your data belongs to you.
It started on YouTube. Videos of people complaining about Discord — how it requires government ID for verification, how it tracks user activity, how it keeps stripping away anonymity. Then I stumbled upon how Discord and other platforms are tied to companies that make a living collecting and analyzing user data. And I thought — why not try doing it differently?
Discord's terms of service say they can read your messages. Black on white. They know who you talk to, when, for how long, about what. They collect telemetry from the client — what you click, where you scroll, what games you play. And that data gets passed along.
When you think about it, it's absurd. A private conversation between friends travels through servers of a company that profits from it. As if the mailman opened every letter, read through it, and then slipped an ad into your mailbox for things you mentioned.
And it's not just Discord. Messenger, Teams, Slack — they all work the same way. Centralized platforms operate on the principle that you are the product. Your data is raw material, your attention is merchandise.
So I thought: what if I just wrote the whole thing myself?
A server that runs on the cheapest VPS for a few bucks a month. A client that doesn't need a browser engine or gigabytes of RAM. Login without email, without phone number, without a password on the server — just a cryptographic key that never leaves your device. Your data stays on your server, separated from everyone else's.
It's not a utopia. It's a few thousand lines of Go code, an SQLite database, and WebRTC for voice calls directly between participants. No AI models trained on your conversations. No telemetry. No analytics dashboard. Just chat.
NORA isn't for everyone. It's for people who care about who reads their messages. For a group of friends who want their own space without oversight. For anyone who believes that private conversation should be the default, not a premium feature for $10 a month.
The entire code is open under AGPL-3.0. You can read it, fork it, modify it, host it. The server even offers to download its own source code. Because trust without transparency is just marketing.
— K., author of NORA
Everything you know from Discord — text channels, voice calls, screen sharing, files, emoji, roles. But under your control. Below we explain how things differ.
In NORA there is no registration via email or phone. Your identity is a cryptographic key. The name you choose is just for readability — the server knows you only as a key.
= your identity on the server
= proof that it's you
There is no password on the server. The password you choose only encrypts your private key on your device — like a PIN protects a SIM card. The server never sees it, never stores it, never needs it. During login, the server sends a random challenge, you sign it with your key — and that proves it's you.
DMs in NORA work differently. The server doesn't know what you're writing, doesn't store history, and files go directly between participants.
Server can't see the content
Server stores nothing
Directly between participants, no server
Discord has a 25 MB limit (500 MB for $10/month). In NORA the admin sets the limit — or there is none. And we can do more than just upload a file.
A disconnect doesn't mean starting over
Zip on upload, unzip on download
Like a network drive
Directly between computers
Playing together online and need a LAN? NORA can create a virtual network between participants — no complicated setup.
Virtual LAN over the internet
No configuration needed
Run game servers directly from NORA. Minecraft, Valheim, Factorio — without manually setting up Docker.
Pick a preset, name it, start
Full control over configs
NORA is not a finished product. It's a working skeleton — proof that it can be done differently.
Everything mentioned on this page works. Text channels, voice, encrypted DMs, files, LAN Party, game servers — you can download it all and try it. But there are still small things to finish, rough edges to smooth, details to tune.
The goal right now is not to compete with Discord feature by feature. It's about showing that a chat for a group of friends doesn't need corporate infrastructure, tracking, and data sales. That the same thing can be built differently — openly, simply, without compromising privacy.
This is a presentation of that skeleton. If it caught your interest, download the client, spin up a server, and try it out.
NORA is a tool for private communication. The author explicitly distances himself from any illegal use of this software.
Privacy is a fundamental right — not a means for committing crimes. NORA was created so that ordinary people can communicate without unnecessary surveillance, not to enable circumvention of the law.
Anyone who operates a NORA server bears full responsibility for the content and activities on their server in accordance with the laws of their jurisdiction. The author of the software provides no warranties and assumes no liability for how the software is used by third parties.