Signal
BUY ITby Signal Technology Foundation
Last verified September 11, 2026
Signal's Android app is a genuinely large, actively maintained open-source project — 29,311 GitHub stars and a commit as recent as today, not just a privacy marketing claim with no real engineering behind it.
Signal positions itself as the private messenger — end-to-end encrypted by default for everyone, with the protocol itself open source and independently auditable, not just a marketing claim.
As of 2026-09-11, the Signal-Android GitHub repo has 29,311 stars and 6,881 forks, with a commit as recent as today — a large, actively maintained codebase, not an abandoned open-source gesture. 499 open issues is proportionate to a project of this scale and real-world usage.
The combination of a genuinely large star count, a high fork count (real forking activity, not just bookmarking), and commits landing the same day this was checked backs up the "actively maintained, not just open-washing" claim better than most apps that call themselves open source.
Is Signal actually free?
Yes, free with no ads and no data-selling business model — it's funded by a nonprofit foundation and donations.
Is the encryption really open source?
Yes — the Signal Protocol and the app's code are both public and auditable, unlike most messaging apps that only claim encryption without publishing how it works.