head to head · open source

Lemmy vs lemmy-ui

Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lemmy-ui has 1,008 stars, 379 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 1,348% (14,599 vs 1,008 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; lemmy-ui is written in CSS under AGPL-3.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, lemmy-ui 38%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (lemmy, link-aggregator, reddit), 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.

Lemmy ★ 15K lemmy-ui ★ 1.0K category Community & Social

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Side by side

	Lemmy	lemmy-ui
GitHub stars	★ 15K	★ 1.0K
License	AGPL-3.0	AGPL-3.0
Written in	Rust	CSS
Last push	2026-09-16	2026-09-14
Forks	⑂ 966	⑂ 379
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

full Lemmy profile →

pick lemmy-ui if

You want the lemmy-ui feature set and don't need the biggest community
You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
Your stack matches CSS
You evaluated both and lemmy-ui fits your workflow better

full lemmy-ui profile →

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 lemmy-ui

lemmy ui is the official web app for Lemmy — the federated link aggregator and forum of the Fediverse — and it is built for the people who run and use Lemmy servers rather than for anyone seeking a centrally hosted social network.

read the full lemmy-ui overview →

More in Community & Social

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More Social Networking projects

Compare either of these against the rest of the Social Networking field.

Lemmy vs Mastodon Lemmy vs maigret Lemmy vs glance Lemmy vs Bluesky Lemmy vs owncast Lemmy vs misskey Lemmy vs core Lemmy vs Pixelfed Lemmy vs Infinity-For-Reddit Lemmy vs writefreely Lemmy vs Reddit-Enhancement-Suite Lemmy vs praw

Frequently asked questions

Is Lemmy or lemmy-ui more popular?

Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and lemmy-ui has 1,008. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.

Are Lemmy and lemmy-ui free?

Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and lemmy-ui under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.

What is the difference between Lemmy and lemmy-ui?

Lemmy is written in Rust and lemmy-ui in CSS. 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 lemmy-ui?

Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose lemmy-ui if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.