head to head · open source
Lemmy vs upvote-rss
Lemmy has 14,676 GitHub stars, 978 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. upvote-rss has 513 stars, 17 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 2,761% (14,676 vs 513 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; upvote-rss is written in PHP under MIT. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, upvote-rss 3%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (lemmy, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lemmy | upvote-rss | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 513 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-10 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 978 | ⑂ 17 |
| 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 upvote-rss if
- You want the upvote-rss feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and upvote-rss 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 upvote-rss
Upvote RSS Generate rich RSS feeds for popular posts from social aggregation websites Reddit, Lemmy, Hacker News, Lobsters, PieFed, Mbin, and git forge GitHub. Table of Contents Features Motivation Installation Usage Feed options Additional configuration Environment variables Disclaimer Attribution License Features Supports subreddits, Hacker News, Lemmy communities, Lobste.rs, PieFed communities, Mbin magazines, and GitHub Configurable filtering to dial in the right number of posts per day in your feed reader Embedded post media (videos, galleries, and images) Parsers to extract clean content and add featured…
read the full upvote-rss overview →
More in Community & Social
Related comparisons
More Social Networking projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Social Networking field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or upvote-rss more popular?
Lemmy has 14,676 GitHub stars and upvote-rss has 513. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and upvote-rss free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and upvote-rss under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and upvote-rss?
Lemmy is written in Rust and upvote-rss 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 upvote-rss?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,676 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose upvote-rss if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.