head to head · open source
Lemmy vs owncast
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. owncast has 11,644 stars, 1,194 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 26% (14,659 vs 11,644 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; owncast is written in Go under MIT. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, owncast 10%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (activitypub, chat, 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 | owncast | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 owncast if
- You want the owncast feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and owncast 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 owncast
Take control over your content and stream it yourself. Explore the docs » View Demo · FAQ · Report Bug · Report Security Issue Table of Contents 📒 About the Project 🚀 Getting Started 👨💻 Use with your broadcasting software 🛠 Building from source 🚨 Important note about source code and the develop branch 🗄️ Backend ⚛️ Frontend 👏 Contributing 💵 Donors Security 📝 License Contact About The Project Owncast is an open source, self hosted, decentralized, single user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options. It offers complete…
read the full owncast overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or owncast more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and owncast has 11,644. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and owncast free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and owncast under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and owncast?
Lemmy is written in Rust and owncast in Go. 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 owncast?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose owncast if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.