Slack Green vs StayGreenOnSlack: an Honest Comparison

We build Slack Green, and StayGreenOnSlack.com is the competitor we get asked about most, for a good reason: it is the same idea. Both products hold your Slack presence active from cloud servers, on a schedule you set, with your laptop closed or off. Neither needs software running on your machine to keep the dot green. If you came here expecting one of them to be a different category of tool, like a mouse jiggler or a keep-awake app, they are not; this is a comparison inside one category, written by one of the two vendors. Where a difference favors them, it is listed the same way as the ones that favor us.

Where they are the same

The architecture is identical in kind. A server authenticates as your Slack session and keeps presence active during the hours you choose. That shared design means the big claims are true of both: the laptop can be closed, asleep, or off; nothing is installed on the machine; scheduling covers work hours, custom hours, and timezones; and to Slack's servers the traffic looks like a normal signed-in session. The category's shared trade-off is also true of both: you hand a session credential to a third-party service, and you should read how each vendor handles that before paying either one. Ours is documented in will I get caught using Slack Green.

The differences that are real

Setup. StayGreenOnSlack installs a Chrome extension that reads your workspace and connects in about 30 seconds. That is genuinely less friction for a non-technical user. Slack Green deliberately has no extension: you follow a tutorial and paste two browser tokens, about two minutes, and nothing is ever added to your browser. Which trade you prefer is a real fork: their way is faster, our way leaves no extension installed on a work machine.

Self-hosting. Slack Green ships an open self-hosted CLI: run it on your own machine or server, tokens never leave your hands, no subscription. StayGreenOnSlack has no equivalent. If "no third party holds my session" is your hard requirement, this is the deciding row, and it is also the honest answer to the category's token trade-off above.

API and Teams. Points to them: paid plans include an HTTP API with Zapier and Make hooks, and they run a sibling product for Microsoft Teams. Slack Green has no public API today and covers Slack only; if your team is half on Teams, their pair of products fits that shape better. If you keep both chat apps green from one machine instead, the free-methods route is in keeping Teams and Slack active.

One accuracy note

StayGreenOnSlack's guides state that Slack marks you away after 30 minutes of inactivity. Slack's documented desktop timer is 10 minutes, which you can verify in Slack's own help pages or by leaving your keyboard for ten minutes. It does not change what their product does, but timer accuracy matters when you are debugging why your dot went gray; the full rules are in how Slack active status works.

Which one to pick

Pick StayGreenOnSlack if you want the fastest possible setup, need Zapier or API control over your presence, or also live in Microsoft Teams. Pick Slack Green if you want a longer free trial before paying, a setup that installs nothing in your browser, one of the 11 languages the dashboard and guides run in, or the self-hosted escape hatch that removes the third-party-token question entirely. If neither of those lists settles it, both products have free trials long enough to test against each other, which is the comparison that actually matters.

Every other way to keep the dot green, including the free ones, is compared in how to keep Slack active.