head to head · open source
Lemmy vs pump.io
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pump.io has 2,240 stars, 327 forks, 679 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 554% (14,659 vs 2,240 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; pump.io is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, pump.io 15%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | pump.io | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-02-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 327 |
| 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 pump.io if
- You want the pump.io feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and pump.io 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 pump.io
pump.io This is pump.io. It's a stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network. What's it for? I post something and my followers see it. That's the rough idea behind the pump. There's an API defined in the API.md file. It uses activitystrea.ms JSON as the main data and command format. You can post almost anything that can be represented with activity streams short or long text, bookmarks, images, video, audio, events, geo checkins. You can follow friends, create lists of people, and so on. The software is useful for at least these scenarios: Activity stream functionality for an…
read the full pump.io overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or pump.io more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and pump.io has 2,240. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and pump.io free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pump.io under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and pump.io?
Lemmy is written in Rust and pump.io 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 pump.io?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pump.io if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.