Abstract. Research on mechanisms of organic matter degradation, bacterial activities, phytoplankton dynamics, and other processes has led to the development of numerous sophisticated water quality models. The earliest model, dating back to 1925, was based on first-order kinetics for organic matter degradation. The community-centered freshwater biogeochemistry model RIVE was initially developed in 1994 and has subsequently been integrated into several software programs such as Seneque-Riverstrahler, pyNuts-Riverstrahler, ProSe/ProSe-PA, and Barman. After 30 years of research, the use of different programming languages including QBasic, Visual Basic, Fortran, ANSI C, and Python, as well as parallel evolution and the addition of new formalisms, raises questions about their comparability. This paper presents a unified version of the RIVE model for the water column, including formalisms for bacterial communities (heterotrophic and nitrifying), primary producers, zooplankton, nutrients, inorganic carbon, and dissolved oxygen cycles. The unified RIVE model is open-source and implemented in Python 3 to create pyRIVE 1.0 and in ANSI C to create C-RIVE 0.32. The organic matter degradation module is validated by simulating batch experiments. The comparability of the pyRIVE 1.0 and C-RIVE 0.32 software is verified by modeling a river stretch case study. The case study considers the full biogeochemical cycles (microorganisms, nutrients, carbon, and oxygen) in the water column, as well as the effects of light and water temperature. The results show that the simulated concentrations of all state variables, including microorganisms and chemical species, are very similar for pyRIVE 1.0 and C-RIVE 0.32. This open-source project highly encourages contributions from the freshwater biogeochemistry community to further advance the project and achieve common objectives.