head to head · open source
Lemmy vs misskey
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. misskey has 11,366 stars, 1,640 forks, 2,535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lemmy leads on adoption by 29% (14,659 vs 11,366 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; misskey is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, misskey 14%. Lemmy 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 | misskey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 misskey if
- You want the misskey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and misskey 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 misskey
🌎 Misskey is an open source, federated social media platform that's free forever! 🚀 Learn more Thanks Thanks to Sentry for providing the error tracking platform that helps us catch unexpected errors. Thanks to Chromatic for providing the visual testing platform that helps us review UI changes and catch visual regressions. Thanks to Codecov for providing the code coverage platform that helps us improve our test coverage. Thanks to Crowdin for providing the localization platform that helps us translate Misskey into many languages. Thanks to Docker for providing the container platform that helps us run Misskey in…
read the full misskey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or misskey more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and misskey has 11,366. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and misskey free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and misskey under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and misskey?
Lemmy is written in Rust and misskey 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 misskey?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose misskey if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.