We make Slonke, so read this knowing that. To keep ourselves honest, this page says plainly where Rave is the better pick, because for plenty of groups it is.
Rave fits big groups on phones. Voice chat costs nothing, there is no cap on party size, and it runs on iOS, Android, desktops and TVs. Slonke fits exactly two people on desktop Chrome who want voice and video without making accounts. A group hang and a date are different products, and these are those two products.
| Slonke | Rave | |
|---|---|---|
| Voice/video built in | Yes, free | Voice and text, free; no built-in video call |
| Price | Free | Free with ads; Premium removes them |
| Account required | No | Yes, both sides |
| Group size | 2, by design | Unlimited |
| Platforms | Netflix, YouTube, JioHotstar (beta), more rolling out | Netflix, YouTube, Prime, Disney+, Max, Twitch, Google Drive |
| Privacy | No accounts, no tracking; calls P2P and encrypted | Account-based; ads on the free tier |
| Devices | Desktop Chrome | iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, TVs |
The sign-in wall comes first. Rave wants an account before you watch anything, on both sides of the party, and for two people who just wanted to press play together that is a strange opening move. The free tier carries ads on top, so the cost of "free" is an identity and some commercials.
Then there is the desktop experience. Rave was built for phones and it is genuinely good there, but the desktop app is a phone interface stretched across a monitor, and it behaves like an afterthought because it is one. And the public rooms, which Rave promotes as a feature, fill with strangers and spam fast. If you came for a movie with one specific person, you will spend your first minutes turning the social features off.
Anything that looks like a crowd. Six friends on phones watching anime, a Twitch stream with a group, a Google Drive file you all need to see: that is Rave territory, and Slonke does not compete there at all with its hard two-person cap. Rave also runs on iOS, Android and TVs, where Slonke is desktop Chrome only. If your watch party happens on a phone, Rave is the answer and this page is short.
Slonke is capped at two people, and everything follows from that. The voice and video call is built in and free, there is nothing to sign up for on either side, and one link starts the party. The call runs peer-to-peer and encrypted, nothing about you is tracked or sold, and there are games in the chat for the slow parts of the movie. No ads, because a date with commercial breaks in the tooling is a worse date.
Group on phones: use Rave, it is the best crowd tool we tested. You and your person on a laptop: add Slonke to Chrome and send one link.
We tested the whole field, including the tools that are quietly dead, in our Teleparty alternatives roundup.