Element X - Secure Chat & Call
Sovereign. Seamless. On Matrix
How much does Element X - Secure Chat & Call cost?
Prices are current as of 11 Sept 2026.
Element X - Secure Chat & Call has no in-app products on record in the United States.
10+ alternatives to Element X - Secure Chat & Call
| Element X - Secure Chat & Call |   Mastodon |   Session - Private Messenger |   Beeper: Every Chat in One App |   SimpleX Chat: secure messenger |   Monal — XMPP Chat |   Voyager for Lemmy |   Delta Chat |   Jami |   FluffyChat |   Root: Built for Community | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating / 5 | 3.7 | 4.5 | 4.4 | 4.7 | 4.4 | 3.9 | 4.8 | 4.3 | 3.8 | 4.1 | 4.2 |
| Reviews | 714 | 39K | 14K | 6.7K | 1.4K | 620 | 607 | 512 | 483 | 360 | 203 |
| Released | 2023 | 2021 | 2020 | 2025 | 2022 | 2009 | 2023 | 2020 | 2017 | 2021 | 2025 |
| Monthly price | — | — | — | $9.99 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Annual price | — | — | — | $99.99 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
The going rate for each plan in United States, in its own currency, shaded from the cheapest price on the row to the dearest.
Element X - Secure Chat & Call reviews
3.7 out of 5, based on 714 reviews.
What people like
- Looks much better than the old version.
- Calls are faster than Discord alternatives.
- Supports right-to-left languages properly.
- Feels native and smooth on your device.
What they complain about
- Notification badge gets stuck and won't clear.
- App crashes frequently or shows a grey screen.
- Setup is confusing and requires technical knowledge.
- Missing basic features like stickers and video calls.
pls add stickers!
Amazing app. Thank you for developing! The only thing is missing is stickers. Its way easier to convince people to switch to Element if it would had stickers functionality
Stuck in endless reset loop
Tried to get this working with Ubuntu and an iPhone got stuck in an endless loop of resetting recovery keys and passwords. Tried several different accounts with several different email addresses and I’m a developer of 20 years. This is hard to set up.
Works fine for me
Getting logged into a Matrix server is an esoteric challenge, but once you’re in, this app works great. It does have Spaces and Rooms. I even saw an indicator that there was a thread in one of my rooms. I don’t see the ability to make a thread myself.
Not ready for prime time
The encryption works great at locking me out from my messages and failing validation and failing to reset keys. It was decent when it worked. But now that its broken I cant get if to work with anything. I would honestly pay for a perpetual license to have an app that wasn’t so miserable.
Video call
Please bring back the ability to move your own video preview during video calls. It’s very inconvenient now that it’s fixed at the bottom of the screen.
Works perfectly for me
1. When someone sends multiple voice messages and I listen to only some of them, it’s difficult to tell which messages I have already listened to and which ones I haven’t. 2. When listening to several audio messages, I currently have to press the play button on each message individually. It would be much more convenient if the messages played automatically one after another.
Unable to search specific messages
This was a solid replacement to the Signal app until I realized the search function is only for chats, no specific messages within the chats. It’s super inconvenient to scroll to possibly find the message you sent 3 months ago about a specific topic. I use the search function all the time to find literally anything on any device I’m using. Please change this.
1 star sacrificed to the notification glitch
my OCD suffers with one persistent unread…
Much faster, but notifications get stuck.
Much faster than Element, but if I get a notification of a new message, then see that message on another device, Element X refuses to clear it, even after opening the app.
Room for improvement
It would be nice that when I type a link in the chat, it would show all the media attached to the linked post. Also I'd appreciate having the ability to change my matrix domain and matrix username. The display name doesn't count.
let me mute spaces
let me turn off notifications or mute for all chats in a Space please
Same old glitch.
I don’t understand why I have a green dot in the msg compose area. Also my preferred notification type is nothing but the badge, and this app always shows a badger with a 1 that I can’t clear. There cannot possibly be any unread messages. I’ve deleted everything except one active chat group and I know I’ve seen all the activity. This bug has been going on for YEARS and it followed me from the old app. Glad I can opt out of typing notifs, but I wish I could opt other people out of my typing notifs too. Overall better than the old one, but still… oof. Really clunky and meh for the age of the service and app.
great
I wish there was a search in chat function like discord
Is this like a test app?
- video doesn’t work - threads are not ready
I like it but…
Element X is a real step up from using Hermes Agent with Telegram. But it crashes several times a day. I’m using it on a m5 iPad Pro with 12 gb of ram, so the hardware should be more than adequate. I encourage the devs to put more resources into the app. Consider charging a one time fee for it. $10 wouldn’t be out of line, once.
Feature request
It would be great to: 1) highlight unread answers in threads; 2) allow custom (or at least system) notification sound. Thanks!
bug
jump to the first unread message, instead of the last one. please!
Incomplete Implementation
Overall I can’t say too much bad about Element given it’s a free service. I have been annoyed by the mix of the new and old Element apps and the confusion it causes among my less technical friends when it comes to video/voice calls. Overall I do enjoy the layout of the new app compared to the original kinda clunky app.
Why is this necessary?
The old app works just fine, the newer app is missing things like chat spaces. Just feels like this platform is in trouble if they're having to produce a whole new app as opposed to an update.
Where’s the threads list?
It’s fine I guess but why can’t you see a list of threads? It technically supports threads but you have to scroll up in a chat (sometimes quite a bit depending on when the thread was started) to find it. Seems like a stupid thing to overlook.
App
Great app
Not very sovereign and Seamless if it doesn’t work at all
Can’t even log into my organization account through my phone. At the starts it says sorry an error occurred and that’s it:) Thanks and what a JOKE!
Great app
Thanks for right to left language support
Pretty good but could use improvements
Fix the VC features and add more features similar to the Cinny client.
Better Icon Please
Wonderful App！But use a better app icon please！Classic icon looks much better.
Rust cult for the win
After many frustrating hours of troubleshooting my reverse proxy and having to consult the wizard known as chatGPT, I give up. I started to read through all of the complaints on this apps Reddit thread. And there it was…stupid frigin rust is part of this app. Had I see this sooner I would’ve abandoned all hope and moved on to a matrix alternative. This app is complete trash. After getting ESS Community stood up and celebrating that small feat I land on this pile of you know what. Can the Rust cult stop ruining good products? I wish I could give this app zero stars, it’s that bad.
Great, needs work tho
Works great but basic functionality and the badges get stuck, always showing I have 1-2 messages when I do not. Still- better than discord!
Legacy support
Could you guys add a toggle for machines that aren’t running the required stuff for matrix authentication since it is an other worldly headache for a first timer
Canonical
It's the flagship client. Hopefully, it can be made feature-complete.
Come on.
Who holds admins accountable? Who holds room admins and space admins accountable? The admin? Is there no failsafe to hold admins accountable?? This is just lazy top-down design from the app itself… don’t u think devs??
Missing key features
It’s good but it needs a few key features: 1. LTR word in a RTL sentence makes the sentence broken, no other chat app has this issue 2. It does not support iOS stickers Other than this, its a great app
Where is unread notification?
I constantly have a notification badge indicating I have an unread message somewhere. I look everywhere for it (including the Unread) filter but it never changes. The app otherwise has lots of potential.
Requesting Keycloak
I’ve been using the older Element for a while and recently decided to move to Element X. However, to fully switch and take advantage of everything Element X offers, I need Keycloak as a sign-in option for custom homeservers. Please consider adding this as it’s a crucial feature for those of us using Keycloak for authentication.
1 star for not loading Rooms ever
Complaint Summary. iOS version: 26.3 | What kept infinitely loading: Room creation in Space | This was so horribly frustrating. Never trying Matrix again until they improve loading issues. As of right now, I can't find any true alternative to Discord on the iPhone. The most recommended ones, I tried, and they have major flaws that make them unusable. Trying to create a new Space with more than 5 Rooms (copying a regular server from Discord) is a nightmare. Worst experience by far... I spent an hour patiently trying to turn my WiFi on-and-off, closing and reopening the app... Nothing worked. It just sucks. 😭
ios audio
I noticed that the audio call icon has finally appeared in the Android version, which is great. However, it is still missing in the iOS version. Do you have any plans to add it to iOS soon?
Badge stuck at 1
It’s a new lookalike to other chat apps with fewer features. It’s legible to me though and not all the rest are. However this version has trouble clearing notifications and it’s really annoying.
Дуже добре
Нативний додаток відчувається та виглядає набагато краще.
A
Trying to delete and having issues doing that and apple can not help either.
Notifications glitch
Got this as a fall back for when discord launches their mandatory Face ID update it’s been good so far but I have a permanent notification number when I don’t have anything to read or see in the app hopefully this glitch gets fixed at one point.
It’s fine, I guess
The chat part works. But I don’t get notifications, and I have a stuck badge count of 1 that doesn’t go away and it doesn’t tell me what I could do to clear it.
Blank screen
It was working but now the app just won’t load ever. It receives push notifications but because this app is only a grey screen of nothing, I can no longer chat or read message contents. So not seamless.
Not bad
It’s off to a decent start, only feature I’d like is an easier method to invite people to add like a QR code like Discord
feels like a beta test
its a little buggy and featureless. for example uploading a profile picture doesn’t let you zoom or crop and i can’t enable or disable notifications through the system settings
Element X - Secure Chat & Call FAQ
- Is Element X - Secure Chat & Call free?
- Yes. The app is free, in all 174 countries it sells in, and it sells nothing inside it.
- Does Element X - Secure Chat & Call have a free trial?
- No. None of its offers (US) come with a free trial.
- What are the best alternatives to Element X - Secure Chat & Call?
- Mastodon (4.5 from 38,576 reviews), Session - Private Messenger (4.4 from 13,886 reviews) and Beeper: Every Chat in One App (4.7 from 6,701 reviews, premium from $9.99).
Element X - Secure Chat & Call download
Last updated 1 month ago.
Element X - Secure Chat & Call sells in 174 countries. It was released 3 years and 3 months ago, on 6 Jul 2023. It holds a 3.7 rating from 714 reviews.
Supports 38 languages: English, Arabic, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmål, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh.
How much does Element X - Secure Chat & Call make?
Third-party estimates for the last 30 days, worldwide — not the store's own figures, which Apple publishes for nobody.