Best Video Conferencing Software (2026): Top 8 Compared

Zoom Workplace is the collaboration suite from Zoom Communications, built around the Zoom meeting product and extended with team chat, phone, whiteboards, scheduling, mail, calendar and documents. Meetings remain the centre of the offer, and every plan, including the free Basic tier, includes unlimited meetings, screen sharing, breakout rooms, waiting rooms, virtual backgrounds, automated captions and co-annotation on shared screens.

The tiers differ mainly in meeting length, participant capacity, storage and administration. Basic limits meetings to 40 minutes and 100 participants and allows three meeting summaries a month. Pro raises the length to 30 hours, adds unlimited AI meeting summaries, 10 GB of cloud recording per user and Zoom Mail and Calendar. Business raises the cap to 300 participants and adds unlimited whiteboards, single sign-on, managed domains, device management and data loss prevention APIs. Enterprise lists 500 or more participants, unlimited cloud recording, a full PBX, webinars for 500 attendees and Zoom Rooms.

Zoom's listed AI features include summaries, questions during a meeting, custom summary templates and note-taking. Buyers comparing Zoom with suite-bundled tools should note that Zoom also sells mail, calendar and documents, so it can overlap with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace that an organisation already owns.

Microsoft Teams is Microsoft's workspace for chat, calls, meetings and file collaboration. Most organisations get it through a Microsoft 365 subscription, but Microsoft also sells Teams Essentials as a standalone meeting and chat product for small and mid-sized businesses.

Microsoft's business comparison lists the same core meeting limits on all three plans checked: meetings of up to 30 hours, up to 300 participants, screen sharing, custom backgrounds, Together mode, noise suppression and data encryption for meetings, chats, calls and files. Teams Essentials includes meeting recordings with transcripts and English live captions, 10 GB of cloud storage per user and phone and web support.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic adds identity and access management for up to 300 users, web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, custom business email, 1 TB of storage per user, Bookings, Planner and Forms, and an AI chat experience. Business Standard adds the desktop Office apps on up to five PCs or Macs per user. Teams Phone and Teams Rooms are separate add-ons, so organisations that want a business phone number or equipped conference rooms should budget for them separately. Larger organisations buy Teams through enterprise agreements that are not covered by the business price list checked here.

Google Meet is the video meeting service in Google Workspace, Google's suite of Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides. Google does not sell Meet as a separate business licence. Meeting capacity and features depend on the Workspace edition.

Google's pricing page lists video meetings with 100 participants on Business Starter, 150 participants with recording and noise cancellation on Business Standard, 500 participants with attendance tracking on Business Plus, and 1,000 participants with in-domain live streaming on Enterprise plans. Business Starter, Standard and Plus can be bought for up to 300 users, while Enterprise plans have no user limit. Google's billing help page lists both a Flexible Plan with no commitment and an Annual/Fixed-Term Plan at a lower monthly rate.

Meet runs in a web browser without a software install, and on phones and tablets through the Meet app. Google's product page describes video at up to 1080p, AI noise reduction, live captions, and joining meetings directly from Docs, Sheets and Slides. Polls, breakout rooms, moderation controls and Q&A are available on certain Business and Enterprise plans. Gemini in Meet adds automated notes and translation on the plans that include it. For an organisation already on Google Workspace, the main question is whether its current edition has the participant cap and recording features it needs.

Webex is Cisco's collaboration platform, covering meetings, calling, webinars and events, contact centre and communications APIs. Webex sells meetings as a self-service plan and as part of a bundle with business calling.

Webex Free allows unlimited meetings of up to 40 minutes with 100 attendees, screen sharing with annotation, unlimited whiteboards, local recording, noise cancellation, messaging and Vidcast for recorded video. Webex Meet extends meetings to 24 hours and 200 attendees and adds the Webex AI Assistant, 10 GB of cloud recording, closed captions and live polling and Q&A through Slido, which Cisco owns. Webex Suite adds a business phone number, calling to any telephone number, visual voicemail and unlimited local and domestic long-distance calling.

Webex Enterprise is sold through sales and lists up to 1,000 attendees, unlimited cloud recording and FedRAMP-authorised security, which matters to US government agencies and their suppliers. Some Enterprise plans include Webex events. Two add-ons are priced on the page: Call Me, which dials the attendee's phone instead of using computer audio, and real-time translation from English into more than 100 closed-captioned languages. At the time of checking, Webex advertised six months free on purchases of five or more licences. Buyers should confirm whether that offer still applies.

GoTo Meeting is the meeting product from GoTo, the company formerly known as LogMeIn, which also sells GoTo Webinar, GoTo Training, the GoTo Connect phone system and LogMeIn remote-access products. GoTo Meeting is sold as a standalone product, separate from any office suite.

Pricing is per organiser, meaning the person who hosts. Professional includes 150 participants, HD video, screen sharing, web audio, a dial-in conference line, unlimited meetings, business messaging, a personal meeting room, breakout rooms, closed captioning, hand raising, quick polls, drawing tools and keyboard and mouse sharing. Business raises capacity to 250 participants and adds unlimited cloud recording, AI meeting summaries, transcription, slide-to-PDF, a smart assistant and note-taking, plus co-organisers and meeting lock.

Enterprise is offered as a custom package and keeps the 250-participant cap, adding account management features such as a customer success manager, onboarding and training, and volume discounts. GoTo also bundles meetings with webinars, room solutions and phones at a discount. Security features listed on the pricing page include AES-256 encryption, SOC 2 certified data centres, risk-based authentication and HIPAA compliance, and the plan comparison lists single sign-on and an Active Directory connector. Organisations that need meetings larger than 250 people should look at GoTo Webinar or another product in this comparison.

Whereby is a European video meeting company that sells two products: Whereby Meetings, a browser-based meeting tool for individuals and teams, and Whereby Embedded, an API and SDK for developers who build video calls into their own apps. This comparison covers Whereby Meetings.

Whereby is built around permanent room links. A host keeps the same URL for each room, and guests open it in a browser to join. Free covers one room, four attendees and meetings of up to 30 minutes. Pro, for individual professionals, covers three rooms, 100 attendees, 12 active videos, no time limit, custom branding and recording. Business, for teams of three or more hosts, adds unlimited rooms, 200 attendees, 24 active videos, shared and flex rooms, a custom subdomain, custom waiting rooms and priority support.

Collaboration features listed across plans include screen sharing, background effects, noise reduction, hybrid meeting support, breakout groups, local recording and file sharing. Whereby lists integrations with Miro, Google Docs, Trello, YouTube, Outlook and Slack, and states that more than 30,000 companies use it, a vendor figure. Whereby markets itself as a European alternative to US-based meeting tools. Teams that need meetings with several hundred participants, phone dial-in or a full collaboration suite will find the scope narrower than the suite products on this page.

Zoho Meeting is the video meeting product from Zoho, which sells a large family of business applications, including CRM, mail and the Zoho Workplace suite. Zoho sells Meeting and Webinar as separate editions, and this comparison covers the Meeting edition.

The free plan allows meetings of up to 60 minutes with up to 100 participants, with screen sharing, a whiteboard, VoIP calling, chat, moderator controls and basic reports. Standard extends meetings to 24 hours and adds 5 GB of cloud recording storage per host, up to two co-hosts, a personal room, annotation, sharing of PDFs, presentations and videos, local dial-in numbers, polls, meeting lock, remote control, integrations, user management and co-branding.

Professional adds a custom domain, departments, breakout rooms, an embeddable meeting widget, multiple co-hosts, advanced analytics, API access, file management, recording transcripts and meeting keynotes. Zoho prices both paid plans by the maximum meeting size, with tiers of 10, 25, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 participants, and offers volume discounts and lower annual rates. Add-ons include extra recording storage, toll-free numbers for more than 55 countries and a premium support plan at 20% of the licence fee. Zoho displays prices in the visitor's local currency, so buyers should confirm the US-dollar price on the live page.

Jitsi Meet is open-source video conferencing software. Jitsi is a trademark of 8x8, the communications company, which also runs the hosted service and a commercial version called Jitsi as a Service (JaaS). The Jitsi project describes Jitsi Meet as fully encrypted and 100% open source, and usable every day for free with no account.

There are three ways to use it. Anyone can start a meeting on meet.jit.si, the public service, by choosing a meeting URL and sharing it. Organisations can download the server and run their own instance, keeping meetings on infrastructure they control. Developers can use JaaS, where 8x8 hosts the Jitsi stack and charges by monthly active users, to embed video meetings in their own products.

The project lists screen and presentation sharing, invitations through a custom URL, collaborative document editing through Etherpad, integrated chat with emoji, HD audio using the Opus codec and encryption by default with advanced security settings. Because the code is open, teams can change the interface and features. The trade-off is operational. A self-hosted deployment needs someone to run and secure the servers, and the free public service does not include the user management, compliance features and support contracts that the paid suites on this page sell. JaaS plans cover the hosting but are priced for application embedding rather than for internal staff meetings.