Alternatives to Yahoo Messenger
Yahoo's veteran chat
None of its 12 checklist rows are verified yet.
Yahoo's veteran chat. Yahoo Messenger has been discontinued; the active alternatives listed here are maintained products you can switch to.
Yahoo account holders who wanted free real-time text chat with friends and family online, particularly during the late 1990s through 2010s before smartphone messaging apps became dominant.
Yahoo Messenger provided one-on-one and group text chat, voice and video calling, and file transfer between contacts. It included a buddy list showing who was online, customizable status messages and avatars, public chat rooms, and IMVironments (custom chat backgrounds/skins). It also integrated with other Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail. Yahoo shut the service down in July 2018 in favor of Yahoo Squirrel and other messaging efforts.
Users signed in with a Yahoo ID, added contacts to a buddy list, and clicked a name to open a chat window for text, voice, or video communication; offline messages were delivered the next time a contact came online.
Why people leave Yahoo Messenger
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Ranked alternatives
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Every fact and feature listed for Yahoo Messenger is verified against its own pages. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.
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Status discontinued verified 2026-07-11
Oath, the Verizon subsidiary that operates Yahoo, announced Friday that it will shut down Yahoo Messenger next month. Users won't be able to access the service after July 17 anymore, according to a me
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/yahoo-messenger-shutting-down-20-155635218.html
FAQ
Yes. Beeper, Delta Chat and Jami have a free tier or are fully free. Free-tier limits in the comparison table are verified and dated.
Delta Chat, Jami and Session — every license claim links its source.