MeshCore vs. Meshtastic

If you’ve bought a LoRa radio recently, it probably shipped with Meshtastic on it. Meshtastic is the better-known project, and plenty of Texans use it. MeshTexas runs on MeshCore instead. Here’s what that means for you, and why we made that call.

Same radios, different languages

Meshtastic and MeshCore run on the same hardware (Heltec, RAK, LilyGo, Seeed and so on), but they speak different protocols. A Meshtastic node and a MeshCore node can’t message each other, even when they’re sitting right next to each other on the same frequency.

The good news is that nothing is permanent. Switching a radio from one to the other is a browser reflash that takes a few minutes, and you can switch back whenever you like. Plenty of people keep one radio on each.

What Meshtastic is great at

Meshtastic is a mature, well-supported project, and for a lot of uses it’s the right tool:

• Small groups and short trips. Hiking, camping, events, a group of friends across a neighborhood. Everyone’s radio helps relay, so a handful of nodes covers a lot of ground with no planning.
• Sensors and telemetry. It has built-in modules for environment sensors, position tracking, remote hardware and more.
• Integrations. ATAK support, MQTT, and a large ecosystem of apps and add-ons.
• Community size. It has more users, more guides and more people who’ve already solved your problem.

How MeshCore is different

MeshCore splits the network into two kinds of nodes:

• Companions are the radios you carry and pair with your phone. They send and receive your messages, but they don’t relay anyone else’s traffic.
• Repeaters (and Room Servers set to repeat) are fixed infrastructure, ideally up high, whose whole job is relaying.

That one design choice drives most of the other differences:

• Fewer transmissions per message. In Meshtastic, any node may rebroadcast a message it hears, although it holds back if a neighbor already did. In MeshCore only repeaters relay, so a crowd of phones at an event doesn’t add to the airtime.
• Direct messages learn a route. The first DM to a contact floods the network to find a path. After that, messages travel along that path through only the repeaters they need, and fall back to flooding if the path breaks. Meshtastic added similar next-hop routing for DMs in version 2.6, so the gap here is smaller than older comparisons suggest.
• Longer reach. Meshtastic caps messages at 7 hops (3 by default). MeshCore repeaters can be set to allow up to 64, which matters when a message has to cross hundreds of miles of repeaters.
• Infrastructure you can plan. Because the relays are known, fixed nodes, a network can be mapped, monitored and improved deliberately. Our repeater map, live map and analyzer are built around this.

Group channel messages flood in both systems. The difference is that in MeshCore only repeaters do the flooding.

Why MeshTexas uses MeshCore

MeshTexas is trying to build something big: a connected network across a state that stretches nearly 800 miles in each direction. When every node can relay, adding users also adds transmissions, and busy areas can get congested as a network grows. A backbone of well-placed repeaters grows differently. A new user adds their own messages and nothing more, and new repeaters go where coverage is actually missing.

That’s a tradeoff, not a free win. MeshCore depends on people putting up repeaters, and one radio on its own does less than a Meshtastic node would. That’s why so much of this site is about hosting a node. But for a statewide network, we think it’s the right foundation.

Already on Meshtastic?

You’re welcome here either way. Several Texas groups run both networks side by side, including the San Antonio and Austin communities. See Communities to find one near you. If you want to try MeshCore, Getting Started walks you through flashing a radio you already own.