Compared
Verus against the messengers you already have
Verus lets you stay nobody until the moment being somebody matters. Then you prove who you are to the one person who needs to know and take the proof back when it is no longer their business. No phone number, no directory to be found in and every conversation encrypted end to end.
Assessed from published documentation in August 2026, with Viber and Discord added in September 2026 and Zenzap in October 2026. User numbers are left out on purpose: they date within weeks and they are not our measurement to publish. If anything here is wrong, tell us and it gets corrected.
Six questions worth asking of a private messenger
The first three are what the category already argues about. The last three are the ones nothing else on this table answers at all.
| App | Works without a phone number | End to end encrypted by default | Nothing to be looked up in | Prove who you are, to one person | Take the proof back | Anybody can check the proof |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verus | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Signal | No | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| No | Yes | No | No | No | No | |
| Telegram | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Viber | No | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Discord | Yes | Partial | No | No | No | No |
| Keet | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Session, SimpleX, Threema | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Zenzap | No | At rest | No | No | No | No |
Telegram encrypts its ordinary cloud chats in transit and at rest but not end to end; its Secret Chats are end to end encrypted, opt in and tied to one device, which is why the column reads no. Discord encrypts every voice and video call end to end by default but not text messages, and has said it has no plans to, which is why its column reads partial. Zenzap's trust centre lists encryption at rest and bring your own key, which is what its encryption column names. Its sign up verifies a phone number, which is why the first column reads no.
The actual difference
Anonymous when you want. Provable when it matters.
Verus gives you messaging with no phone number and then, inside the same conversation, a way to prove who you are to one person and take it back afterwards.
In most messengers, anonymity is where the story ends. The moment a conversation reaches something that turns on who you are, buying the car, signing the tenancy, changing the bank details on a completion, hiring the stranger, telling the journalist you are the person you say you are, you have to leave the app and prove it some other way. So people go back to the number, the email, the video call, the photograph of a passport in a chat window.
Verus treats identity as a permission rather than an account property. You ask Confrmo to attest to who you are, a signed claim rides along with your messages for as long as you want it to, the other side can check it against the server that issued it from their own browser, and when it stops being any of their business you revoke it. The address underneath never changed, so you are anonymous again rather than a named account who switched a badge off.
That is the row nothing else on the table has a tick in, and it is the reason this product exists.
Get Verus today
Verus runs on the Mac and on Android today, with the iPhone app on its way.
The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple and installs from this site. Android is on Google Play. The iPhone app is built, runs on handsets against the live deployment and is with Apple for review. Voice calls work on real phones in both directions. Video calls are coming soon.
Everything Verus is marked yes on in the table above is running in the live deployment right now and can be exercised against it. The full build status lists every feature and where it has got to.