head to head · open source
Lemmy vs fedify
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. fedify has 1,024 stars, 135 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lemmy leads on adoption by 1,326% (14,599 vs 1,024 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; fedify is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, fedify 13%. fedify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (activitypub, fediverse), 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
| Lemmy | fedify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 135 |
| 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 fedify if
- You want the fedify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and fedify 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 fedify
Fedify is a TypeScript library for building federated server applications on ActivityPub, aimed at developers who want their own software to speak the fediverse protocol without hand writing the protocol layer.
read the full fedify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or fedify more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and fedify has 1,024. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and fedify free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and fedify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and fedify?
Lemmy is written in Rust and fedify 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, Lemmy or fedify?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose fedify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.