BurnChat Is Now Open Source — and You Can Embed It Anywhere 🔥

Two big moves today. First, we open-sourced the entire BurnChat platform on GitHub. Every line of code — the server, the chat, the games, the admin panel — is now public under the MIT license. Second, we launched an embeddable chat widget that lets anyone add a BurnChat room to their website with a single line of code.

Open Source on GitHub

BurnChat was built on a simple idea: the safest message is one that doesn't exist. We think that idea is worth more than keeping the code private. So we put everything on GitHub.

The entire codebase is two main files. server.js handles the chat — rooms, messages, voice, commands, admin, the works. game.js runs the multiplayer Snake server. The frontend is a single index.html with zero build step, zero framework, zero dependencies beyond Socket.IO. That's it.

You can clone it, run node server.js, and have your own BurnChat instance running in under a minute. Host it on a $5 VPS. Modify it. Fork it. We don't care — it's MIT licensed.

What you'll find in the repo:

We also included deploy configs for nginx and systemd, so you can go from git clone to production in about 10 minutes.

Embed BurnChat on Any Website

This is the one we're most excited about. You can now add a BurnChat room to any website — your blog, your community, your event page, your Shopify store — with one script tag:

<script
  src="https://burnchat.io/widget.js"
  data-room="my-community"
  data-theme="dark"
  data-accent="#ff6b35"
  async>
</script>

That's the entire integration. No signup. No API key. No account. Your visitors pick a nickname and start chatting. When the room empties, everything burns — just like on burnchat.io itself.

The widget loader is under 5KB, loads asynchronously, and the chat iframe only initializes when someone clicks the bubble. Zero impact on your page speed. We tested it — it doesn't move your Core Web Vitals by a single millisecond.

The Widget Configurator

We built an interactive configurator at burnchat.io/widget where you can customize everything visually — theme, accent color, position, size, welcome message — and see a live preview update in real-time. When you're happy with how it looks, copy the embed code and paste it into your site.

You can embed as a floating bubble (a chat icon in the corner that opens a chat window) or as an inline embed (a chat room embedded directly in your page content). Both modes are fully responsive.

WordPress Plugin Coming Soon

We're also submitting a WordPress plugin to the official plugin directory. Install it from your WordPress admin, enter a room name, and the chat widget appears on your entire site. It includes a shortcode ([burnchat]) for page-specific embeds and a full settings page with a color picker. We'll announce it here when it's approved.

Why We Did This

Two reasons.

Trust. We tell people we don't store their messages. We tell people there's no database. But "trust us" is a weak argument for a privacy tool. Now you can read the code yourself. Every line. There is no hidden logging, no analytics SDK, no tracking pixel buried in the source. The server is 900 lines of JavaScript and the frontend is a single HTML file. You can audit the whole thing in an afternoon.

Growth. Every website that embeds BurnChat becomes a live demo of what we built. Every developer who clones the repo might build something we haven't thought of. Open source isn't charity — it's the best distribution strategy for a product that's genuinely good enough to speak for itself.

What's Next

We're working on end-to-end encryption, WebRTC voice calls, and more multiplayer games. The roadmap is in the GitHub README. If you want to contribute, pull requests are welcome.

If you embed the widget on your site, we'd love to hear about it. Jump into any room and tell us — or open an issue on GitHub.