A free, open-source HeyTaco alternative for Slack
A daily allowance, your own emoji, leaderboards for giving as well as receiving, and no per-seat bill for thanking your colleagues.
Add to Slack installs Morgenruf on the free hosted instance CloudDrove runs. Self-hosting is the same MIT code.
Morgenruf is a free, open-source (MIT) HeyTaco alternative for recognition in Slack. Everyone gets a daily allowance of tokens, in any emoji you like, that resets at midnight in their own timezone, with leaderboards for giving and receiving. It has no rewards catalogue, runs hosted free or self-hosted, and includes standups and coffee chats.
Last reviewed September 26, 2026
| Morgenruf | HeyTaco | |
|---|---|---|
| Peer recognition in Slack | Yes | Yes |
| Daily allowance that resets | Yes, midnight in each timezone | Yes |
| Your own emoji as the token | Yes | Tacos |
| Leaderboards for giving | Yes | Yes |
| Rewards catalogue and gift cards | No | Yes |
| Async standups in the same app | Yes | No |
| Coffee chat introductions | Yes | No |
| Runs on your own servers | Yes | No |
| Source you can read | MIT | Closed |
| Microsoft Teams | In progress | Yes |
| Price | Free, any team size | Per seat, monthly |
Checked against HeyTaco's public pages in September 2026.
The honest version
HeyTaco is the best-known recognition bot for a reason: the taco is a genuinely good piece of product design, the gamification is thought through, and the rewards side is a real programme rather than a leaderboard.
Where they win. If you want a rewards catalogue, gift cards, or a recognition programme with a budget attached, HeyTaco does that and Morgenruf does not. Do not switch and then discover it.
Where this is different
Recognition is one of three things it does
Standups, coffee chats and kudos in one app, one database, one deployment. Teams rarely want only one of the three, and three subscriptions is how most of them end up.
The token is yours
Any emoji in your workspace. A maple leaf, your logo, an in-joke. The Morgenruf icon imports as a custom emoji and the bot picks it up on its own.
Recognition data next to something else
A leaderboard tells you who is thanked. Put it beside standup answers and you can ask who is contributing and being thanked by nobody, which is the question worth acting on.
Nothing for HR to install
Add to Slack puts Morgenruf on the free hosted instance, so whoever runs recognition can switch kudos on without an engineer. If the data has to stay in-house, the self-hosted route is one container and a Postgres; the setup page is the link to forward.
The price, again
Free for every seat, hosted or self-hosted. Recognition tools are usually priced per person per month, which means the cost of thanking people grows exactly as you hire them.
Morgenruf and HeyTaco
Does Morgenruf do rewards or gift cards?
No. Recognition here is a public message and a leaderboard. If you need a catalogue, HeyTaco or Bonusly is the right tool.
Can we keep our taco?
You can use any emoji in your workspace as the token, including a taco, though that is somebody else's brand. A maple leaf is the default joke here.
Can I import our recognition history?
No importer today. Leaderboards start fresh, which some teams treat as a feature.