Best Video Conferencing Software in 2026

Zoom Workplace is the current packaging of Zoom's meeting software, which now sits alongside team chat, VoIP phone, scheduler, whiteboard, mail and calendar, short video clips and AI features in one subscription.

The free Basic plan allows meetings of up to 100 participants for 40 minutes, with local recording and limited AI use: three meeting summaries and three AI note-taking uses a month. Pro raises meeting length to 30 hours and adds 10 GB of cloud recording per user and unlimited AI meeting summaries; Business allows 300 participants and adds SSO, managed domains and unlimited whiteboards; Enterprise lists up to 1,000 participants, unlimited cloud recording, a full PBX phone system, webinars for 500 attendees, Zoom Rooms and workspace reservation.

Zoom's limitations are mostly commercial: features such as large webinars and room systems are licensed separately or reserved for Enterprise, and Enterprise prices are not published. Its own pricing page lists Enterprise capacity inconsistently, as 1,000 on the plan card and 500+ in the comparison table. Nonprofits receive 50% off Pro and Business.

Microsoft Teams combines meetings, persistent chat, channels, file collaboration and calling, and is included in most Microsoft 365 business and enterprise subscriptions as well as in the standalone Teams Essentials plan. For organisations already on Microsoft 365, it is often the default video-conferencing tool because licensing, identity and file storage are already in place.

Microsoft's published limits state that Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, Teams Essentials and A1 plans can host meetings and video calls of up to 300 people, rising to 1,000 people on F1/F3/E3/E5, Office 365 E-series and education and government plans and on the Teams EEA plans sold separately in Europe. Meetings and events such as webinars and town halls have a 30-hour time limit. Microsoft retired Teams live events on 30 June 2026, directing customers to the unified Teams events experience for town halls and webinars; events scheduled before that date are supported until 28 February 2027.

Teams is heavier than single-purpose meeting tools and works best inside a Microsoft-managed tenant; external guests and federated users face more friction than in Zoom or Whereby. Microsoft's US pricing pages could not be retrieved for this review, so prices are not quoted here.

Google Meet is Google's video-conferencing service, available free with a personal Google account and included in every Google Workspace business plan alongside Gmail, Drive, Docs and Calendar. It runs in the browser without a download, which makes joining straightforward for external guests.

Meeting capacity and features rise with the Workspace tier. Business Starter supports 100 participants and does not include Meet recording; Business Standard supports 150 participants with recording; Business Plus supports 500; Enterprise supports 1,000. Storage is pooled across the organisation, ranging from 30 GB per user on Starter to 5 TB per user on Plus and Enterprise.

Meet is chosen mainly by organisations already on Google Workspace. Its feature set for large events and room systems is narrower than Zoom's or Webex's, and recording requires at least Business Standard. Prices on Google's page were displayed in euros to this review's location; US-dollar prices differ.

Webex is Cisco's collaboration platform, covering meetings, calling, webinars and events, contact centre and communications APIs. It has a long presence in large enterprises and public-sector organisations, supported by Cisco's room devices.

The free plan allows unlimited meetings of up to 40 minutes with up to 100 attendees, and includes screen sharing with annotation, unlimited whiteboards, local recording, advanced noise cancellation, unlimited messaging and the Vidcast video-messaging tool. Webex Enterprise adds the AI Assistant, local and unlimited cloud recording, meetings of up to 1,000 attendees and FedRAMP-authorised security, with Webex events included in certain plans. Licensing is per host: anyone can join a meeting without a licence.

The pricing page reviewed did not publish prices for paid plans, so organisations need a quote for anything beyond the free tier. Webex's breadth suits enterprises that also buy Cisco calling and room hardware, but smaller teams may find it more complex than Zoom or Google Meet.

RingCentral was founded in 1999 by Vlad Shmunis and Vlad Vendrow and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013; it reports more than 600,000 customers and availability in 46 countries. Its core RingEX product combines business phone service, video meetings and team messaging in one app.

Every RingEX tier includes HD meetings of up to 300 participants, and the company has added AI features including an AI Receptionist and LLM plug-ins and MCP connectors. Higher tiers add toll-free minutes, SMS allowances and analytics. RingCentral also sells RingCentral Events for webinars from US$99 per organiser per month and RingCentral Rooms for conference rooms from US$39 per room per month.

RingEX is best evaluated as a phone system that also does video, rather than as a standalone meeting tool. Prices assume an annual commitment and rise for monthly billing, and teams that need only video meetings will pay for telephony they do not use. A 14-day free trial is available to new subscribers.

Zoho Meeting is the meeting and webinar product of Zoho, the business-software company behind Zoho CRM and Zoho Workplace. It is sold in Meeting and Webinar editions with prices offered in US dollars, Indian rupees, euros and pounds.

The free plan supports up to 100 participants for meetings of up to 60 minutes, with screen sharing, VoIP, chat, whiteboard, moderator controls and basic reports. The paid Standard plan is sold in participant tiers from 10 to 250 and adds 5 GB of cloud recording storage per host, up to two co-hosts, meetings of up to 24 hours, a personal room, annotation, polls, remote control and dial-in numbers; Professional adds breakout rooms, multiple co-hosts, API access, advanced analytics, recording transcripts and a custom domain. Yearly billing saves more than 15%, and a 14-day trial requires no credit card.

Zoho Meeting suits smaller organisations and existing Zoho customers. Its maximum meeting size of 250 is lower than Zoom, Teams or Webex enterprise tiers, and the per-host price varies with the chosen participant tier.

Dialpad is a cloud communications platform for calls, messages and meetings that emphasises AI: real-time transcripts, automatic summaries called AI Recaps, and coaching tools for sales and support teams. Its business communications plans include HD calls and AI-powered meetings with built-in messaging.

Dialpad sells three families of plans: business communications (Standard and Pro), AI sales plans and AI contact-centre plans. The Standard plan includes unlimited calls, AI-powered meetings and messaging with real-time transcripts and call summaries; Pro adds CRM integrations, 24/7 support and multi-office management. Sales and contact-centre tiers add features such as local-presence dialling, live coaching, quality management and workforce management.

As with RingCentral, Dialpad's value lies in combining telephony and meetings. Organisations wanting only video meetings will find it less focused than Zoom or Google Meet, and some higher tiers are annual-only.

Whereby began in 2013 as appear.in, a summer intern project inside the Norwegian telecom operator Telenor and one of the first web applications built on the WebRTC standard. It was spun out in 2017 to new owners, Videonor, rebranded as Whereby in 2019 and launched Whereby Embedded, a video-calling API, in 2020; in 2023 the company refocused its product and engineering teams on the API.

Whereby Meetings remains available for individuals and teams. Each host has permanent room URLs that guests open in a browser with no download or account. The free plan allows one room, four attendees and 30-minute meetings; Pro allows three rooms and 100 attendees; Business, with a three-host minimum, allows unlimited rooms, 200 attendees, shared and flexible rooms and a custom subdomain. Prices are in US dollars excluding VAT, with a 17% saving on annual billing.

Whereby's simplicity suits consultants, therapists and small teams, and the Embedded product suits telehealth and platform builders. Its meeting sizes are smaller than Zoom's, and since 2023 the company's development priority has been the API rather than the Meetings app.

Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted, 100% open-source video-conferencing application that can be used free without an account on the public meet.jit.si service or deployed on an organisation's own servers. The Jitsi trademark belongs to 8x8, Inc., which also offers Jitsi as a Service (JaaS), a hosted version run by the team that builds Jitsi.

Features include desktop and presentation sharing, invitations by custom URL, integrated chat and emoji, collaborative document editing through Etherpad, HD audio using the Opus codec and encryption by default with advanced security settings. Because the code is open, developers can modify and embed it, and many organisations self-host Jitsi to keep meeting data on their own infrastructure.

The trade-offs are those of open-source software: the public service has no service-level guarantee, self-hosting requires server administration and capacity planning, and features such as large-meeting management, AI summaries and admin consoles are less developed than in commercial products.

BigBlueButton is open-source web-conferencing software designed for online teaching rather than business meetings. Its feature set centres on classroom tools: screen sharing, a multi-user whiteboard, breakout rooms, polling and the ability to broadcast videos to all participants.

The project says BigBlueButton has been adopted as the default virtual classroom by Canvas, Moodle Cloud, Sakai, Jenzabar, D2L and Schoology, vendors that together account for more than 75% of the worldwide learning-management-system market, and that it is used daily in more than 65 languages. Schools can run it themselves or buy hosting from commercial providers listed by the project.

BigBlueButton is a strong fit for universities and schools that teach inside an LMS. It is not designed for sales calls or general corporate meetings, lacks the calendar and phone integrations of Zoom or Teams, and self-hosting requires server resources and administration.

Pexip is a video-technology company whose shares are listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker PEXIP. It reports employees across 26 countries. Its products fall into two groups: Pexip Secure Meetings, a meeting platform deployable as SaaS, on-premises or in a private cloud for defence, government, healthcare and justice customers, and Pexip Connect, which lets meeting-room devices join meetings on other platforms.

Pexip Connect Premium lets Microsoft Teams Rooms join Webex, Zoom and Google meetings, lets Zoom Rooms join Teams meetings, and lets Google Meet hardware join Teams, Zoom and Webex calls, with one-touch join and up to 1080p video. Pexip Connect Standard brings Teams-like experiences to SIP and H.323 room systems and supports secure authentication through OIDC and SAML. The company also offers Private AI, scheduling and room-management add-ons and announced Pexip Connect One, a single licence for connecting any meeting room.

Pexip is not a general-purpose meeting tool for small teams; it is bought by organisations with strict data-sovereignty requirements or mixed room-hardware estates. Pricing is mostly through resellers and quotes.

Lifesize is a video-conferencing brand now operated by Enghouse Video, which groups it with Vidyo, Mediasite, Qumu, Momindum and other video brands. The Lifesize product line covers cloud, on-premises and hybrid video conferencing and conference-room systems, alongside Enghouse's enterprise video-management, live-broadcasting and recording products.

Enghouse markets the combined portfolio to healthcare, education, financial services, government, judiciary and professional-services customers, with options for branding and white-labelling, telehealth and live-event production. For buyers needing on-premises or hybrid deployment together with lecture capture or video management, the combination of Lifesize and Mediasite is the main attraction.

Lifesize is a niche choice in 2026 compared with Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, and buyers should check the product roadmap and support terms under Enghouse ownership. Prices are not published on the site.