head to head · open source
Lemmy vs talkyard
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars, 973 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped yesterday. talkyard has 1,814 stars, 127 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 708% (14,659 vs 1,814 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; talkyard is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, talkyard 7%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (chat, 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 | talkyard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 973 | ⑂ 127 |
| 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 talkyard if
- You want the talkyard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and talkyard 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 talkyard
Talkyard ============================= Forum software, with chat, and anonymous comments. Thoughtful discussions.  Insightful comments rise to the top. Upvote ideas.  Sort by votes. Question Answers.  Discuss, select an answer. Chat channels.  Pretty basic features. Blog comments.  Listen to your readers. How does it compare with other software?   Find out here . Self Hosting:   See talkyard prod one Demo:   Discussion forum:   Documentation:   (incomplete) Development:   That's this repo! See: docs/developing talkyard.md Features Good…
read the full talkyard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or talkyard more popular?
Lemmy has 14,659 GitHub stars and talkyard has 1,814. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and talkyard free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and talkyard under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and talkyard?
Lemmy is written in Rust and talkyard in TypeScript. 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 talkyard?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,659 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose talkyard if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.