BitlBee communicates with the user via the IRC protocol, providing a gateway to popular chat networks such as AIM and ICQ (via OSCAR), Microsoft Messenger service (via MSNP), Yahoo!

(via YMSG) and Facebook Messenger (via MQTT with a plugin[5]) and the microblogging networks Twitter,[6] Identi.ca, and GNU Social.

Since version 3.0, BitlBee can be built to use the libpurple library, which supports file transfers on many IM networks, and supports GaduGadu, QQ and other less well-known protocols.

[10] A user registers with the BitlBee server for future credentials storage.

[11] BitlBee runs on Linux, Unix, BSD, Windows, AmigaOS[9] and macOS.