head to head · open source
Lemmy vs movim
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. movim has 2,069 stars, 287 forks, 43 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lemmy leads on adoption by 609% (14,659 vs 2,069 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; movim is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, movim 14%. movim was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chat), 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 | movim | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 287 |
| 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 movim if
- You want the movim feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and movim 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 movim
Movim Federated blogging and chat platform About Movim is a federated blogging and chat platform that acts as a web frontend for the XMPP protocol. Deployment Please refer to the installation instructions in the INSTALL.md file, or check out the Movim Wiki for more information. Quick Test You can try out Movim on your local machine in a container using Podman (main website). Podman is a FOSS alternative to Docker that is available on all the main distributions. ⚠️ This setup is only for tests purpose, the containers are not optimized and most of the caches are disabled. To deploy your own Movim instance use the…
read the full movim overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or movim more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and movim has 2,069. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and movim free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and movim under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and movim?
Lemmy is written in Rust and movim in PHP. 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 movim?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose movim if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.