Luxchat The European alternative to WhatsApp

Luxchat is a messenger for text messages, voice and video calls, video conferences and sharing files and locations. The service is aimed at individuals and businesses and is free of charge and ad-free for these groups. Luxchat was initiated by LU-CIX and the Luxembourg digital ministry. For businesses there is the paid variant Luxchat4Pro, and for public sector employees the state provides the variant Luxchat4Gov. Apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, plus a web client.

According to the provider, Luxchat is hosted in data centers in Luxembourg and operated there by several providers, including LU-CIX, Internet.lu and MixVoIP. One of these providers is selected during registration, and the feature set is the same with all of them. The terms of use and the website privacy policy name LU-CIX Management G.I.E. from Bettembourg. The use of AWS, Google Cloud or Azure is not mentioned on the public pages. Individual hosting companies or data centers are not named.

Luxchat uses Matrix, an open and standardized protocol for real-time communication. The apps are customized versions built on a fork of the open-source client Element. Messages are end-to-end encrypted, while group video calls with three or more participants use transport encryption according to the provider. Through Matrix, the servers are federated, similar to the way email works. According to the provider, the goal is national autonomy in security and data management.