head to head · open source
glance vs Lemmy
glance has 37,086 GitHub stars, 1,463 forks, 318 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. Lemmy has 14,599 stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. glance leads on adoption by 154% (37,086 vs 14,599 stars). glance is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. glance has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Lemmy 7%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (reddit), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| glance | Lemmy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-05 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 966 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick glance if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Lemmy if
- You want the Lemmy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Lemmy fits your workflow better
About glance
Glance is a self hosted dashboard application written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It gathers feeds and status information from many sources into a single customizable page, so that a user can read news, follow channels and watch server health from one interface instead of opening a separate tab or application for each source. It lives in the self hosted and homelab ecosystem, alongside other Docker packaged services that users run on their own hardware. The project has been on GitHub for about two years, holds roughly 37,000 stars and 1,454 forks, and its topic list places it among aggregators,…
read the full glance overview →
About Lemmy
Lemmy is a link aggregator and forum platform for the Fediverse, written in Rust and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It supports communities where users subscribe to forums, post links and discussions, vote, and comment. Each server can operate independently while remaining federated through ActivityPub, so users on one server can interact with users and communities on other servers.
read the full Lemmy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is glance or Lemmy more popular?
glance has 37,086 GitHub stars and Lemmy has 14,599. glance has the larger community by that measure.
Are glance and Lemmy free?
Both are open source. glance is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Lemmy under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between glance and Lemmy?
glance is written in Go and Lemmy in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, glance or Lemmy?
Choose glance if you want the larger community (37,086 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Lemmy if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.