head to head · open source
Lemmy vs praw
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. praw has 4,256 stars, 501 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 243% (14,599 vs 4,256 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; praw is written in Python under BSD-2-Clause. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, praw 12%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (reddit), 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 | praw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 praw if
- You want the praw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and praw 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 praw
PRAW is the Python Reddit API Wrapper, a Python package for simple access to Reddit's API. It lives in the Python ecosystem and is classified under community and social networking tooling. The project uses the BSD 2 Clause license and has a sixteen year repository age, with a last push date of 2026 09 14. The repository lists 4254 stars and 500 forks.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or praw more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and praw has 4,256. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and praw free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and praw under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and praw?
Lemmy is written in Rust and praw in Python. 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 praw?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose praw if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.