Ekiga is a free, open-source softphone and video conferencing client for Linux and Windows that places audio and video calls over SIP or H.323, with contacts, presence, chat and call forwarding built into one desktop app.
Ekiga handles IP telephony from the desktop with a contact list at the centre rather than a numeric keypad. You register one or more accounts with a SIP registrar or an H.323 gatekeeper, then dial from the address book, a dial pad or a clickable SIP address. Audio and video calls both work, alongside presence indicators, text chat during a call and voicemail notifications. Because Ekiga speaks two telephony standards, it can talk to ordinary SIP services, hardware H.323 equipment and older desktop conferencing systems that many softphones ignore. The project dates back to the GnomeMeeting era of Linux telephony, and it remains a permissively licensed option for anyone who wants video calling without a subscription.
On Linux, Ekiga is typically installed from distribution repositories, and Ekiga detects sound cards, webcams and headset devices instead of asking for device strings. Contacts can be pulled from an LDAP directory or a shared Evolution address book, so a corporate directory appears inside the client, and Zeroconf support helps find colleagues on the same local network without a central server. Registering with several providers at once means a work line and a project line can sit side by side in one window. The trade-off compared with a maintained commercial client such as Bria is age: the codebase has not seen active development for years, so it is best treated as a dependable classic rather than a source of new features.
The appeal of Ekiga is that nothing needs to be bought before a first call. It runs on modest hardware, uses open audio and video codecs, and works with free SIP accounts as readily as paid ones, which makes it useful for testing a provider before committing a team to it. Call handling covers the basics properly: hold, transfer, forwarding on busy or no answer, and dual-tone dialling for automated menus, all over both supported protocols. Codec breadth matters here, because a call that fails between two modern clients may still connect when one side can negotiate older compression. For organisations keeping H.323 equipment alive, Ekiga is one of the few desktop clients that still speaks to it natively. Text chat during a call and presence indicators round out the experience, and because every part of the stack is open source, it can be inspected, rebuilt or adapted without asking a vendor for permission.
Key capabilities and highlights.
Ekiga registers with SIP providers and H.323 gatekeepers at the same time, so one client covers modern VoIP services and legacy conferencing equipment. That interoperability is unusual among free softphones, and it is often the deciding factor in environments where equipment from different decades has to coexist.
Make voice-only calls when bandwidth is tight, or switch on video with quality that scales up to DVD resolution. A GPU-accelerated full-screen mode suits presentations, and the wide range of audio and video codecs means older peers can usually negotiate something both ends understand.
Ekiga opens on a contact list rather than a keypad, showing who is available, busy or away with custom status messages. Entries can come from its own address book, an LDAP directory or a shared Evolution address book, so existing records appear without being retyped.
SIP addresses, callto links and H.323 addresses are recognised, so dialling can start from a web page, an email signature or the address book. Typing long numeric extensions by hand becomes unnecessary, which reduces misdialled numbers in support and sales work.
Hold, transfer, dual-tone dialling and forwarding on busy, no answer or unconditional keep routine call control complete. Message waiting indication shows new voicemail in the interface, so the client behaves like a desk phone rather than a dialler with a contacts window attached.
Register several providers simultaneously and choose which identity to call from, or route traffic through an outbound proxy or gateway. Consultants, support teams and anyone keeping a separate project line can consolidate everything into a single running instance of Ekiga.
Sound cards, USB headsets, Video4Linux and FireWire cameras are detected automatically, so the usual configuration hunt is skipped. Native ALSA and legacy OSS support mean the client still works on older Linux installations where newer audio stacks are unavailable or unreliable.
STUN support helps calls and media find their way through home routers and small office firewalls without manual port forwarding. Combined with an outbound proxy option, Ekiga can be used behind the kinds of networks where a naive softphone simply fails to register.
Browse historical releases and previous builds.
No old versions have been added yet.
Common questions about Ekiga.
Yes. It is open-source software released under the GNU General Public License, with no licence fees, no accounts to purchase and no premium tier that unlocks extra calling features.
Both SIP and H.323 work in the same client. SIP covers most hosted services and private phone systems, while H.323 keeps compatibility with older conferencing hardware, including NetMeeting-era endpoints that modern clients no longer reach.
No. Ekiga can register with any SIP account, including free ones, and it works with H.323 gatekeepers too, so the cost of calling depends on the service you choose rather than on the client itself.
It targets Unix-like systems such as Linux and BSD, and Windows builds have been available as well. On Linux it is usually installed straight from the distribution's package repository, which keeps updates and dependencies simple.
Yes, with quality up to DVD resolution and video codecs including H.261, H.263, H.264, Theora and MPEG-4, plus a full-screen mode accelerated by the graphics card for larger displays and presentations.
Yes. Ekiga can register with and browse LDAP directories, and it integrates with a shared Evolution address book, so corporate contact records appear inside the client without being duplicated elsewhere.
Development has been inactive for years and the source repository is archived, so treat it as a stable classic rather than an evolving product. It keeps working against standard SIP services, but new features are unlikely to arrive.
STUN support assists NAT traversal, and an outbound proxy is available for networks that demand one. Where a firewall blocks the required ports, signalling may succeed while media fails, so test on the real network before a rollout.
Ekiga is a free, open-source softphone and video conferencing client for Linux and Windows that places audio and video calls over SIP or H.323, with contacts, presence, chat and call forwarding built into one desktop app.
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