head to head · open source
Lemmy vs movim
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. movim has 2,056 stars, 283 forks, 43 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lemmy leads on adoption by 610% (14,599 vs 2,056 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 | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 283 |
| 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
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 movim
Movim is a federated blogging and chat platform that acts as a web frontend for the XMPP protocol. It is written in PHP and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. The project sits in the XMPP social networking ecosystem, where communication can be exchanged across a decentralized network rather than being kept inside one central service.
read the full movim overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or movim more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and movim has 2,056. 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 (14,599 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.