head to head · open source
Bluesky vs koala
Bluesky has 18,295 GitHub stars, 2,837 forks, 2,400 open issues and last shipped yesterday. koala has 3,568 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Bluesky leads on adoption by 413% (18,295 vs 3,568 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2025-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 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 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 koala
Koala is a lightweight Ruby library for Facebook APIs. It supports the Graph API, the Marketing API, the Atlas API, realtime updates, test users, and OAuth validation. It lives in the Ruby and Ruby on Rails ecosystem and provides API accessors that return simple JSON responses.
read the full koala overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bluesky or koala more popular?
Bluesky has 18,295 GitHub stars and koala has 3,568. 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 (18,295 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.