head to head · open source
Lemmy vs haven
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haven has 813 stars, 50 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 1,703% (14,659 vs 813 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%. 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 | haven | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 813 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 50 |
| 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
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 haven
Haven Haven is a private blog application built with Ruby on Rails. Write what you want, create accounts for people you want to share with, keep up with each other using built in RSS. Try out a live demo at The following are some motivating philosophies: Open source. MIT License Privacy first. This is for sharing with friends and family, not commercial endevors. If you want a blog for your company, you probably want to use WordPress or Ghost instead. Easy to use. Built in web interface for managing users, customizing the blog, and writing/editing posts with markdown and live preview. Low bandwidth friendly…
read the full haven overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or haven more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and haven has 813. 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 (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose haven if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.