Independent, self-managed infrastructure Read the production requirements

Capacity planning guide

How many users per BigBlueButton server?

There is no honest capacity number without a usage profile. A listen-only lecture and a webcam-heavy workshop can place very different loads on identical hardware.

01

Start from concurrent users, not accounts

Registered users and monthly active users do not determine real-time load. Count the maximum people expected online at once, how they are divided into meetings and what media they will publish.

02

The official rule of thumb

BigBlueButton documentation has historically used roughly 200 simultaneous users on a server meeting the minimum requirements as a planning rule of thumb, while warning that workloads vary and recommending no single session above 200 users. Treat this as a test hypothesis, not an SLA.

03

Webcams change the shape of load

More published cameras, screen sharing and recording increase processing and bandwidth. Define at least a light, typical and peak scenario before choosing node count.

04

Scale out before the ceiling

A Scalelite pool lets new meetings land on less-loaded nodes. Keep operational headroom for spikes, updates and node failure instead of designing around a theoretical maximum.

The operational reality

BigBlueButton capacity depends on how people use media. Hardware specifications help narrow the choice, but your own load test, monitoring and failure plan turn that choice into a production design.

Questions answered

What teams ask before ordering

Can one server support 200 users?+

It can be a starting estimate on compliant hardware, but only your meeting profile and load test can validate it.

Does doubling CPU double capacity?+

Not reliably. Bottlenecks can move between single-thread CPU performance, memory, disk processing and network throughput.

When should I use Scalelite?+

Consider a pool when concurrency, availability targets or maintenance requirements no longer fit comfortably on one node.