Google Meet vs Wire

Google Meet

Participant capacity is published per plan (100/150/500/1000) with 24-hour meetings, in-domain live streaming and a hardware-room add-on, which is genuinely strong scale. But the evidence is silent on screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, waiting rooms and what happens on a constrained connection — undocumentable mechanics cannot be relied on for a works assembly.

Wire

The published pages give hard numbers only for capacity — video conferences up to 150 participants and chats up to 2,000 — while we found no public information on screen sharing, breakout rooms, mute-all or any host moderation, nor on what a call does on a constrained connection. For the chair of a council meeting, none of the controls that make a meeting governable are documented.

Google Meet

Nothing documents any encryption mechanism for Meet media, key handling, lobbies, passcodes or admission control; the only security language is that affiliates and trusted businesses process data under 'appropriate confidentiality and security measures', which is a promise, not a documented mechanism. Judged on documented mechanism, the evidence offers none.

Wire

The strongest case in this whole category: text, voice, video and files are end-to-end encrypted under MLS by default, the code is 100 per cent open source on GitHub, and the vendor states plainly it holds no encryption keys and uses no backdoors. Participants verify each other's device fingerprints, guests join only through password-protected links, and ID Shield binds identities to our own identity provider; the pages assert frequent independent audits without naming a specific report, which alone keeps it off the top mark.

Google Meet

The Meet product pages were captured twice and yielded no evidence of browser joining, guest access by link, dial-in, captions or any accessibility statement — the only telephony in the evidence is a separately sold Voice add-on, which is not a way to phone into a meeting. Absence of any evidenced joining path beyond a signed-in client lands at the bottom anchor.

Wire

Guest access by password-protected link is documented, which spares external participants an account, but we found no public information on joining from a browser without an install, on telephone dial-in, on live captions, or on any accessibility statement. For colleagues on poor connections or using screen readers, the published pages say nothing.

Google Meet

Recording appears from Standard onward and attendance tracking is sold as a Plus feature with no documented off-switch — co-determination over analytics, my central demand, is unmet. Generic per-service deletion, account auto-deletion, Vault retention at Plus and vague admin powers to 'restrict your ability to delete or edit' exist, but nothing on who is told a recording starts, consent, recording storage region, or access logs.

Wire

The published pages show no recording, transcription, attendance-tracking or engagement-scoring feature anywhere — which from a works-council chair's view removes the surveillance surface entirely — but they also leave every governance question open: we found no public information on who may record, who is told, where a recording sits or how long it lives. What is published is retention hygiene for everything else — messages deleted after delivery, logs at most 90 days, usage data at most 365 days — and an admin console that can restrict guest links, file sharing and third-party apps.

Google Meet

Identity tooling is real (Secure LDAP at Plus, Cloud Identity Premium and context-aware access at Enterprise) and the Meet hardware add-on gives room-system support, but no documented API, SCIM, webhooks or embedding appear anywhere. Cloud-only with no self-hosted or private-cloud option in the evidence caps it.

Wire

SAML single sign-on with SCIM provisioning is documented on the paid tiers, the apps SDK is public and open source with webhooks for things like GitHub notifications, and — decisive for co-determination — a genuine on-premises deployment is offered with MLS stated to protect every feature in both cloud and on-premises versions. We found no public information on calendar integration or meeting-room system support.

Google Meet

The vendor is Google LLC of Mountain View, the UK controller is also Google LLC, subprocessors are unnamed 'affiliates and other trusted businesses', and data residency is unconfirmed on the vendor's own pages. Google Ireland as EEA controller and the Enterprise-only 'data regions' feature are the sole EU anchors, and where media and metadata travel is entirely undocumented.

Wire

Media and metadata are stated to sit on servers in Germany and Ireland, a complete subprocessor list is published naming AWS for EU hosting, self-hosted Countly in Germany and Stripe in the USA for payments, and transfers are covered by described adequacy or standard contractual clauses; the contracting entity, however, is Wire Swiss GmbH in Zug, Switzerland, with only an Article 27 representative in Berlin. The on-premises option, which would end the question outright, is what keeps this high for a buyer who weighs sovereignty heavily.

Google Meet

Three of four tiers carry public EUR per-user prices with billing period, annual discount, seat caps (300 on lower tiers) and pooled storage allowances, so an invoice is computable for small host counts. But Enterprise — the only tier with 1000-participant meetings and data regions — is 'Contact sales', the Meet Hardware and Voice add-ons are sold separately with no prices, dial-in rates are absent entirely, and VAT treatment is unstated.

Wire

Most of the invoice is readable from one page: €7.45 per person/month with annual payment or €8.94 monthly for teams up to 100, a free tier for up to 5 people, and capacity limits published (video conferences up to 150 participants). Above 100 people the price becomes a conversation, the Platinum 24/7 and 4-hour support options carry no published price, and we found no public information on VAT treatment or minimum term.