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Today we launched full access to Stack Overflow chat rooms for registered users. With an abundance of public chat rooms available across endless technical topics, Chat offers a real-time connection space with individuals in your communities.
Allowing 1 reputation users to start chatting
Chat access was previously a privilege reserved for users with 20 reputation points or more. As Stack Overflow continues to evolve to be a community-first platform, we realized that this created a barrier for newcomers. To provide an immediate, approachable entry point into the Stack Overflow experience and community networking, we began work to make chat accessible to everyone right from the start.
In May 2025, we launched the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange Lobbies. These spaces immediately give users with 1 reputation a place to discuss projects, ask support questions, and connect. The results from those spaces have been great to see. We verified that 60% of all Lobby room participants currently have fewer than 20 reputation points. This significant engagement from novice users motivates us to expand accessibility to all public chat rooms on Stack Overflow. This opens exciting possibilities for newly engaged users to grow their confidence, find their voice on the platform, and become even more active contributors across the entire platform in the right spaces for their topics.
Updated chat room guidelines and onboarding
As we move forward with opening chat to all registered users, we needed to clarify room guidelines and expectations. Chat Room Owners can now create onboarding cards to their public chat rooms to help the influx of new chat users to know what to expect from a chat room and guidance on how to successfully participate in the chat room.
Stack Overflow Lobby chat room description and guidance page
New moderation and protection tooling for a secure chat experience
At Stack Overflow, user security, safety, and protection are paramount in the products we create and what the community wants. Chat, due to its instant public publishing and large audience, offers us another chance to continuously improve our tools for a safer online experience within the public platform. We have enhanced our moderation capabilities and implemented new security measures, including human identity validation, to prevent spam bots from entering chat rooms. Moderators and chat room owners also have additional tools available to them to assist with guarding against malicious behavior at a broader scale.
Start chatting today
Chat introduces a new level of ease and accessibility for both new and experienced users on Stack Overflow. As Stack Overflow continues to grow into the internet’s most vital resource for technology, we recognize the critical need to enable real-time communication and connection among community members on topics essential to technologists’ success. Explore the chat rooms landing page today to find your community and begin chatting.
