head to head · open source
Lemmy vs postmarks
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. postmarks has 546 stars, 42 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 2,574% (14,599 vs 546 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; postmarks is written in JavaScript under MIT. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, postmarks 8%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (activitypub), 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 | postmarks | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 546 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-05-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 42 |
| 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 postmarks if
- You want the postmarks feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and postmarks 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 postmarks
Postmarks is a single user bookmarking website that you host yourself and connect to the Fediverse, built for one person who wants to own their bookmarks while still sharing them with Mastodon, FireFish, and any other text based ActivityPub platform.
read the full postmarks overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or postmarks more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and postmarks has 546. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and postmarks free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and postmarks under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and postmarks?
Lemmy is written in Rust and postmarks in JavaScript. 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 postmarks?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose postmarks if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.