head to head · open source
Lemmy vs amethyst
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. amethyst has 1,601 stars, 221 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lemmy leads on adoption by 812% (14,599 vs 1,601 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; amethyst is written in Kotlin under MIT. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, amethyst 14%. amethyst 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lemmy | amethyst | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 221 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lemmy if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick amethyst if
- You want the amethyst feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and amethyst fits your workflow better
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 →
About amethyst
Amethyst is Nostr client for Android. Project lives in Nostr social network ecosystem. GitHub description says Nostr client for Android. Topics say android, kotlin, nostr, social network. Category says Community & Social / Social Networking. Homepage is http://amethyst.social. License is MIT. Language is Kotlin. Repository has 1599 stars, 221 forks, 114 open issues. Repository age is 4 years. Last push is 2026 09 15T02:53:19Z. README lists GitHub downloads, Play Store installs, stable release, Quartz Maven Central, Quartz JitPack snapshots, CI, MIT license, DeepWiki.
read the full amethyst overview →
More in Community & Social
Related comparisons
More Social Networking projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Social Networking field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or amethyst more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and amethyst has 1,601. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and amethyst free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and amethyst under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and amethyst?
Lemmy is written in Rust and amethyst in Kotlin. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Lemmy or amethyst?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose amethyst if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.