head to head · open source
Lemmy vs CatchUp
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CatchUp has 2,107 stars, 210 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 596% (14,659 vs 2,107 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; CatchUp is written in Kotlin under Apache-2.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, CatchUp 10%. Lemmy 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
| Lemmy | CatchUp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 210 |
| 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 CatchUp if
- You want the CatchUp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and CatchUp fits your workflow better
About Lemmy
English Español Русский 汉语 漢語 日本語 Lemmy A link aggregator and forum for the fediverse. Join Lemmy · Documentation · Matrix Chat · Report Bug · Request Feature · Releases · Code of Conduct About The Project Lemmy is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, or Hacker News: you subscribe to forums you're interested in, post links and discussions, then vote, and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and all these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse. For a link aggregator, this means a user registered on one…
read the full Lemmy overview →
About CatchUp
CatchUp ======= An app for catching up on things. Motivations There's a lot of services I like reading up on throughout the day. Most of these services have dedicated apps for consuming them, but often times I just want to skim the front page and only deep dive occasionally. Enter CatchUp: a high level presentation of the "front page" of several services in short form, and intelligent deeplinking into dedicated apps if you want to go further. CatchUp is not an all purpose client for each of these services, just the concierge for at a glance details and router for getting on your way. It does not support login…
read the full CatchUp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or CatchUp more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and CatchUp has 2,107. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and CatchUp free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and CatchUp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and CatchUp?
Lemmy is written in Rust and CatchUp 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 CatchUp?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose CatchUp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.