head to head · open source
Bluesky vs koala
Bluesky has 18,364 GitHub stars, 2,872 forks, 2,400 open issues and last shipped yesterday. koala has 3,574 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Bluesky leads on adoption by 414% (18,364 vs 3,574 stars). Bluesky is written in TypeScript under MIT; koala is written in Ruby under MIT. Bluesky has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, koala 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 | koala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 456 |
| 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 koala if
- You want the koala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and koala fits your workflow better
About Bluesky
Bluesky Social App Welcome friends! This is the codebase for the Bluesky Social app. Get the app itself: Web: bsky.app iOS: App Store Android: Play Store Development Resources This is a React Native application, written in the TypeScript programming language. It builds on the atproto TypeScript packages (like @atproto/api ), which are also open source, but in a different git repository. There is a small amount of Go language source code (in ./bskyweb/ ), for a web service that returns the React Native Web application. The Build Instructions are a good place to get started with the app itself. The Authenticated…
read the full Bluesky overview →
About koala
Koala ==== Koala is a Facebook library for Ruby, supporting the Graph API (including the batch requests and photo uploads), the Marketing API, the Atlas API, realtime updates, test users, and OAuth validation. We wrote Koala with four goals: Lightweight: Koala should be as light and simple as Facebook’s own libraries, providing API accessors and returning simple JSON. Fast: Koala should, out of the box, be quick. Out of the box, we use Facebook's faster read only servers when possible and if available, the Typhoeus gem to make snappy Facebook requests. Of course, that brings us to our next topic: Flexible: Koala…
read the full koala overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bluesky or koala more popular?
Bluesky has 18,364 GitHub stars and koala has 3,574. Bluesky has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bluesky and koala free?
Both are open source. Bluesky is licensed under MIT and koala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bluesky and koala?
Bluesky is written in TypeScript and koala in Ruby. 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 koala?
Choose Bluesky if you want the larger community (18,364 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.