Fluxer in November 2026: where we are and what's next

The Operator Pass is on sale, and my post about self-hosting and the Operator Pass explains why I made it. Fluxer has also moved from fluxer.app to fluxer.com. Old fluxer.app links still work, and the web app is at fluxer.com/app.

This post looks back at a busy year, from a private alpha in 2023 to more than 546,000 accounts on fluxer.com today, and at what I'm working on next.

A new voice system, encryption and federation are coming

I'm working on the new voice and video system right now. Every call on it will be end-to-end encrypted, and it's built to fix many voice and screen share problems you've reported. Here's what it changes and which reported problems it fixes. Apart from the iOS app on the App Store, it's the last big thing I plan to ship this year.

I'm also working on getting the iOS app onto the App Store. TestFlight is broken for now because of a long-standing Apple bug we ran into when we removed inactive testers, and here's what happened and when to expect the App Store release.

End-to-end encryption is also coming to DMs, group DMs and notes, and it will be on for everyone with no setting to turn it off. Here's the full plan.

Federation is coming too. With it, people on different Fluxer instances can talk to each other and move their accounts. Here's how federation will work. I'll start on experimental drafts of both in 2026, and by current estimates they'll be stable in the first half of 2027. Both are on our roadmap, and neither has gone anywhere.

Half a million accounts later

Data

Period ending	Accounts	Added in period
September 30, 2023	16	+16
December 31, 2023	16	+0
March 31, 2024	18	+2
June 30, 2024	19	+1
September 30, 2024	20	+1
December 31, 2024	21	+1
March 31, 2025	22	+1
June 30, 2025	24	+2
September 30, 2025	24	+0
December 31, 2025	51	+27
March 31, 2026	184,356	+184,305
June 30, 2026	256,976	+72,620
September 30, 2026	456,330	+199,354
November 2, 2026	546,609	+90,279

These charts count accounts on fluxer.com by the date they were created. They leave out bots and deleted accounts, and the real number of sign-ups was higher.

A high school project with a few dozen testers

I started building Fluxer as a high school project. The first private alpha opened in July 2023 for a few dozen testers, and it only had text chat.

In September 2025 I finished my thesis and started working on Fluxer full-time. The private beta opened to about 30 testers on October 25, 2025, together with Visionary, which helped fund Fluxer before it opened to everyone.

Data

Period ending	Accounts	Added in period
August 31, 2023	16	+16
October 31, 2023	16	+0
December 31, 2023	16	+0
February 29, 2024	17	+1
April 30, 2024	19	+2
June 30, 2024	19	+0
August 31, 2024	20	+1
October 31, 2024	21	+1
December 31, 2024	21	+0
February 28, 2025	21	+0
April 30, 2025	24	+3
June 30, 2025	24	+0
August 31, 2025	24	+0
October 31, 2025	35	+11
December 31, 2025	51	+16
January 1, 2026	52	+1

January, when anyone could sign up

On January 2, 2026, fluxer.com opened to everyone as a public beta. I posted it on Hacker News and Product Hunt, and a few hundred people signed up in the first weeks. Later that month I wrote How I built Fluxer and published our first roadmap.

Data

Period ending	Accounts	Added in period
January 8, 2026	220	+168
January 15, 2026	260	+40
January 22, 2026	272	+12
January 29, 2026	294	+22
February 5, 2026	306	+12
February 8, 2026	309	+3

February, when everyone showed up at once

On February 9, 2026, Discord announced that every account would get teen settings by default, with age verification to change them. More than 100,000 accounts signed up on fluxer.com in the next 16 days, while it still ran on a single server.

It didn't hold up well at first. On February 17, 2026 I shipped a big update to handle the load, and all 1,000 Visionary slots sold out the same day. Fluxer was offline from February 27, 2026 to March 1, 2026 while I moved it from one server to many. A few weeks later, on March 25, 2026, a second wave of sign-ups came.

Data

Period ending	Accounts	Added in period
February 15, 2026	17,772	+17,463
February 22, 2026	81,925	+64,153
March 1, 2026	114,919	+32,994
March 8, 2026	129,714	+14,795
March 15, 2026	143,015	+13,301
March 22, 2026	156,132	+13,117
March 29, 2026	180,290	+24,158
March 31, 2026	184,356	+4,066

Why GitHub went quiet this spring

From March to June, the public repository went quiet. I was working on many ideas to make Fluxer easier to self-host, including running all of it as a single binary. At the same time, waves of spam and attempts to share child sexual abuse material hit fluxer.com, and I added safety checks to stop them as fast as I could.

Those checks were built into the code in many places, and publishing them would have shown spammers how to get around them, so I held off on making the work public. The single binary didn't work out, but many good things came out of it.

Holding the code back was an emergency measure, not a step away from open source. The attacks with despicable material kept coming, and people kept trying to ruin Fluxer for everyone else, so for a few stressful months, stopping them came first.

I did it for my own wellbeing, at a time when a lot was being asked of me from every direction, and only for as long as I had to. I don't plan to hold code back again.

On June 15, 2026 I shipped a big refactor that came from that work, made the mobile apps open source and opened pull requests again. The first GitHub release was on June 30, 2026, and since August every part of Fluxer gets its own release.

You may have seen people point at Fluxer's line counts as proof that it's written by AI. Most of the lines that change in the repository are translation files for the 34 languages Fluxer is available in, and some big commits held months of waiting work. Here's where those numbers come from, along with our stance on AI.

Back to building in public

The biggest day so far came on August 18, 2026, with more than 14,000 new accounts, during another wave of sign-ups that lasted about a week.

On October 16, 2026 I published the first patch notes, with the new desktop app, threads and forums in early beta and Fluxer Feedback for ideas and bug reports. Two days later, fluxer.com had more than 500,000 accounts. Since then, I've added multiple accounts in the desktop app, rexctl for people who self-host and role icons, and you'll find the latest changes in our most recent patch notes.

Data

Period ending	Accounts	Added in period
April 30, 2026	223,171	+38,815
May 31, 2026	242,295	+19,124
June 30, 2026	256,976	+14,681
July 31, 2026	278,874	+21,898
August 31, 2026	388,157	+109,283
September 30, 2026	456,330	+68,173
October 31, 2026	538,224	+81,894
November 2, 2026	546,609	+8,385

1. July 2023 The private alpha opens for a few dozen testers, with text chat only.
2. October 2025 The private beta opens for about 30 testers, and Visionary goes on sale.
3. January 2, 2026 fluxer.com opens to everyone as a public beta.
4. February 9, 2026 Discord's age verification news brings more than 100,000 new accounts in 16 days.
5. February 17, 2026 A big update ships to handle the load, and Visionary sells out.
6. February 27, 2026 Fluxer goes offline for three days to move from one server to many.
7. June 15, 2026 The big refactor is out, and the mobile apps are open source.
8. August 18, 2026 The biggest day so far, with more than 14,000 new accounts.
9. October 16, 2026 The first patch notes, the new desktop app, and threads and forums in early beta.
10. October 18, 2026 fluxer.com has more than 500,000 accounts.
11. November 2, 2026 The Operator Pass goes on sale, and Fluxer moves to fluxer.com.

What I'm building next

My biggest focus is the new voice and video system. I built it from scratch in Rust, with FFmpeg for video and its own voice server and call code in the apps. A lot of it is still messy work on my own computer that isn't finished, but I got pretty far.

Once it's out, every call will be end-to-end encrypted, including your microphone, camera, screen and screen audio, with no setting to turn it off. Video will be encoded on your graphics card where your computer supports it, and the software fallback uses every CPU core, which replaces the encoding path behind the choppy screen shares some of you have run into. Here's everything the new system changes.

Still deciding where to move?

If you're deciding where to move your community, we've compared Fluxer with Discord, Matrix, Stoat, TeamSpeak, Mumble, Root and GameVox.

If you'd like to help

Fluxer has no venture capital, and it's funded by the people who use it. If you'd like to help, you can get an Operator Pass, subscribe to Plutonium or donate. Thank you for being part of this, and for sticking with Fluxer through every outage.