No. 9 of 26 ·Pair Programming Software

Gobby

Windows · Mac · Linux · Self-hosted · API

Freedom report

Two barsScore 5.6

Free tierNo free tier on record
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely3 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

Gobby is ranked #9 of 26 in pair programming software on Freedom251. It runs on API, Linux, macOS, Self-hosted, Windows.

Compared on pair programming software

Free plan: Yes
Integrated chat: Yes
Self-hosted option: Yes

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The record

Purpose: Gobby is a collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and multi-user chat.
Real-time editing: Multiple users can edit the same document together over the internet in real time.
Text editing: The editor provides full-fledged text editing capabilities, including syntax highlighting using GtkSourceView.
Collaboration features: Gobby supports lock-free editing, group undo, remote cursors and selections, and user-specific text colors.
Chat: Gobby includes integrated group chat and supports chat documents through the note-chat server plugin.
Unicode: Gobby supports full Unicode.
Security: Gobby supports encrypted data transfer with perfect forward secrecy and password-protected sessions.
Access control: Gobby provides access-control lists for documents, directories, and server-wide permissions.
Dedicated hosting: The libinfinity package includes the infinoted dedicated Gobby server, which stores documents persistently and supports configurable plugins.
Server security: The infinoted server supports TLS, including a require-tls policy, and automatically uses perfect forward secrecy when TLS is enabled.
Server API: The document-stream plugin provides a simple API to text and chat documents through Unix domain sockets.
Platforms: Binary distributions or installation instructions are provided for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Mac limitation: The project says it cannot offer a pre-built Mac OS X package and recommends installing Gobby and required packages with brew.
Licensing: Gobby is licensed under GPLv2+ and ISC.

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Pair Programming Software in 2026#9 of 26

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Sources

gobby.github.io· checked 1 Oct 2026
github.com/gobby/gobby/wiki· checked 1 Oct 2026
github.com/gobby/gobby/wiki/Permissions· checked 1 Oct 2026
github.com/gobby/gobby/wiki/Dedicated-Server· checked 1 Oct 2026
github.com/gobby/gobby/wiki/Download· checked 1 Oct 2026