head to head · open source
Lemmy vs praw
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. praw has 4,290 stars, 504 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 242% (14,659 vs 4,290 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 504 |
| 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
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 praw
PRAW: The Python Reddit API Wrapper .. image:: :alt: Latest PRAW Version :target: .. image:: :alt: Supported Python Versions :target: .. image:: :alt: PyPI Downloads Monthly :target: .. image:: :alt: GitHub Actions Status :target: .. image:: :alt: OpenSSF Scorecard :target: .. image:: :alt: Contributor Covenant :target: .. image:: :alt: pre commit :target: .. image:: :alt: Ruff :target: PRAW, an acronym for "Python Reddit API Wrapper", is a Python package that allows for simple access to Reddit's API. PRAW aims to be easy to use and internally follows all of Reddit's API rules . With PRAW there's no need to…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or praw more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and praw has 4,290. 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 (14,659 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.