head to head · open source
Bluesky vs talkyard
Bluesky has 18,295 GitHub stars, 2,837 forks, 2,400 open issues and last shipped yesterday. talkyard has 1,812 stars, 129 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Bluesky leads on adoption by 910% (18,295 vs 1,812 stars). Bluesky is written in TypeScript under MIT; talkyard is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Bluesky has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, talkyard 7%. 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 | talkyard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 129 |
| 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 talkyard if
- You want the talkyard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and talkyard 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 talkyard
Talkyard is a community discussion platform written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL 3.0. It describes itself as forum software with chat and anonymous comments, and its topics connect it to StackOverflow style questions and answers, Slack style chat, Discourse style forums, Reddit style voting, and Disqus style blog comments.
read the full talkyard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bluesky or talkyard more popular?
Bluesky has 18,295 GitHub stars and talkyard has 1,812. Bluesky has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bluesky and talkyard free?
Both are open source. Bluesky is licensed under MIT and talkyard under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bluesky and talkyard?
Bluesky is written in TypeScript and talkyard 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 talkyard?
Choose Bluesky if you want the larger community (18,295 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose talkyard if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.