Tuwunel: A High-Performance Matrix Homeserver, Successor to conduwuit
Tuwunel is a Matrix homeserver written in Rust, built to be a scalable, low-cost alternative to Synapse. It describes itself as the official successor to conduwuit, and is primarily sponsored by the government of Switzerland, where it is deployed for citizens.
Features
- Aims to fully implement the Matrix specification
- Rust with an embedded RocksDB database: one binary, no separate database server
- Far lower resource use than Synapse
- Federation with the wider Matrix network
Migration
- From Conduit or conduwuit (and forks): Tuwunel accepts their RocksDB databases and migrates automatically on first start. Back up first
- From Synapse: not yet supported, though planned
Deployment
Tuwunel is unusually well packaged: GitHub releases, Docker images on Docker Hub and GHCR, static binaries, Deb and RPM packages, the Arch AUR, Nix, Alpine, Gentoo, and Ansible playbooks. Run it behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS, and publish federation discovery with .well-known or DNS. Use a client such as Element.
Tuwunel or Continuwuity?
Both continue the conduwuit line. Tuwunel has institutional sponsorship and positions itself as the official successor; Continuwuity is community-run. Both are good choices for a personal or small-community Matrix server; Synapse remains the safest choice for large deployments that need every feature and the widest compatibility.
License
Apache License 2.0.