head to head · open source
Bluesky vs fedify
Bluesky has 18,295 GitHub stars, 2,837 forks, 2,400 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fedify has 1,024 stars, 135 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bluesky leads on adoption by 1,687% (18,295 vs 1,024 stars). Bluesky is written in TypeScript under MIT; fedify is written in TypeScript under MIT. Bluesky has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, fedify 13%. Bluesky was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Bluesky | fedify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 135 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Bluesky if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fedify if
- You want the fedify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and fedify fits your workflow better
About Bluesky
Bluesky is the open source social application codebase for the Bluesky Social app. It lives in the AT Protocol ecosystem, also called atproto, and it is written in TypeScript as a React Native application. The project provides client code for Web, iOS, and Android, and it builds on open source atproto packages such as @atproto/api, which live in a separate repository.
read the full Bluesky overview →
About fedify
Fedify is a TypeScript library for building federated server applications on ActivityPub, aimed at developers who want their own software to speak the fediverse protocol without hand writing the protocol layer.
read the full fedify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bluesky or fedify more popular?
Bluesky has 18,295 GitHub stars and fedify has 1,024. Bluesky has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bluesky and fedify free?
Both are open source. Bluesky is licensed under MIT and fedify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bluesky and fedify?
Bluesky is written in TypeScript and fedify in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Bluesky or fedify?
Choose Bluesky if you want the larger community (18,295 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose fedify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.