head to head · open source
Lemmy vs social
Lemmy has 14,668 GitHub stars, 974 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. social has 11 stars, 0 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 133,245% (14,668 vs 11 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; social is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, social 0%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (activitypub, 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 | social | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 11 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 974 | ⑂ 0 |
| 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 social if
- You want the social feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and social 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 social
Nextcloud Social Your Nextcloud is a Fediverse server. Post, follow and reply across Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, GoToSocial and Akkoma — from the same place your files, calendar and chat already live. No new account. No new app. No algorithm. No advertising. Nextcloud Social gives every user on your server a real Fediverse identity — @you@your.cloud — that anyone on Mastodon can follow, mention and reply to. What you write leaves your server signed, and lands in their timeline. What they write comes back into yours. Nobody else holds it, nobody sells it, and nobody reorders it. It is a partial implementation…
read the full social overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or social more popular?
Lemmy has 14,668 GitHub stars and social has 11. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and social free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and social under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and social?
Lemmy is written in Rust and social in PHP. 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 social?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,668 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose social if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.