head to head · open source
Lemmy vs haven
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. haven has 803 stars, 48 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lemmy leads on adoption by 1,718% (14,599 vs 803 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; haven is written in Ruby under MIT. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, haven 6%. haven 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 | haven | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 803 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 48 |
| 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 haven if
- You want the haven feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and haven 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 haven
Haven is a self hostable, MIT licensed private blogging application built with Ruby on Rails, made for people who want to write for a known circle of friends and family rather than publish to the open web.
read the full haven overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or haven more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and haven has 803. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and haven free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and haven under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and haven?
Lemmy is written in Rust and haven in Ruby. 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 haven?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose haven if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.