LINE vs Wire

What LINE is

LINE is a proprietary consumer communication service for mobile and PC, offering one-to-one and group chat, media, stickers and internet voice/video calls. Core communication is free aside from network data, while stickers, region-specific Premium Backup and other services may be paid. LINE's Letter Sealing end-to-end encryption is on by default and covers text, location, supported media/files and one-to-one voice/video calls. It does not cover group voice/video calls, LINE Meetings, Albums or Notes; media/file coverage can also depend on client version and specifications. A normal group currently supports up to 500 participants.

What Wire is

Wire is a proprietary commercial service built on open-source clients and backend components for end-to-end encrypted messaging, calls, conferences and file sharing. Current pricing offers Wire for Free to teams of up to five, Wire for SMB at €7.45 per person per month billed annually (€8.94 monthly) for up to 100 people, and custom Enterprise/partner arrangements. SMB adds conferences up to 150 participants, SSO, SCIM, administrative policy and external/guest roles. Private-cloud and on-premises deployments add license, setup, implementation and customer-operated infrastructure; air-gapped use is available only through appropriately scoped deployments.

What LINE is built to do

Chats and media

Provides direct and group text, files, photos, video, voice and location sharing.

Voice and video

Supports individual and group internet calls with different encryption coverage.

Letter Sealing

Applies default end-to-end encryption to supported messages and one-to-one calls.

Consumer ecosystem

Adds stickers and region-dependent OpenChat, premium backup and related services.

What Wire is built to do

Encrypted collaboration

Combines multi-device messaging, calls, conferences, screen sharing and files under E2EE.

Enterprise identity

Adds SSO, SCIM, member lifecycle and policy controls on paid team plans.

External collaboration

Supports marked external users and password-protected browser guest rooms.

Deployment choice

Runs in Wire Cloud, a private cloud, on-premises or selected offline environments.

Choose LINE if

• Everyday chats and one-to-one calls among existing LINE users
• Groups of up to 500 people that need simple media-rich coordination
• Users willing to verify Letter Sealing fingerprints for sensitive one-to-one communication

Skip LINE if

• Group calls, meetings, albums and notes must all be end-to-end encrypted
• Enterprise SSO, managed retention, e-discovery and organization-owned identities are required
• Cross-platform history recovery must be complete without a tested backup and transfer procedure

Choose Wire if

• Teams needing E2EE plus SSO and SCIM rather than a consumer messenger
• Organizations collaborating with controlled guests and external partners
• Sovereignty projects prepared to operate or fund private-cloud or on-premises infrastructure

Skip Wire if

• More than five users need a permanently free managed team
• The project assumes open source makes hosted operations free or automatically compliant
• On-premises patching, monitoring, capacity, backups, federation and incident response lack an owner

LINE: pros & cons

• Letter Sealing is enabled by default and protects supported chat content plus one-to-one calls.
• Text, media, location, stickers and free internet calling provide a complete consumer communication set.
• Groups support up to 500 participants with familiar read-state and media workflows.
• Key fingerprints let contacts verify the identity key for a protected conversation.
• Group calls, Meetings, Albums and Notes are not protected by Letter Sealing and use transport encryption instead.
• Photo, video, voice-message and file encryption can depend on app version and specifications.
• Account transfer can make older Letter-Sealed messages unavailable, making backup and recovery planning important.
• Regional availability differs for OpenChat, premium backup, payments and related ecosystem services.

Wire: pros & cons

• Messages, calls and files are end-to-end encrypted across supported multi-device clients.
• SMB includes SSO, SCIM, administration and guest/external controls at a public per-user price.
• Cloud, private-cloud and on-premises options address different sovereignty and operations needs.
• Open-source code and MLS-based group security provide inspectable protocol and implementation surfaces.
• The free plan is capped at five team members and excludes multi-party conference initiation, SSO and policy controls.
• Private-cloud and on-premises total cost includes licenses, setup, implementation, infrastructure and ongoing customer maintenance.
• Federation, ID Shield, multi-tenancy and certain sovereignty features are Enterprise rather than SMB entitlements.
• APIs and SDK custom functionality is not fully supported as a standard deployment path and requires vendor scoping.