head to head · open source
Lemmy vs writefreely
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars, 966 forks, 129 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. writefreely has 5,250 stars, 398 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. Lemmy leads on adoption by 178% (14,599 vs 5,250 stars). Lemmy is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; writefreely is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Lemmy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, writefreely 8%. Lemmy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (activitypub), 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 | writefreely | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 966 | ⑂ 398 |
| 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 writefreely if
- You want the writefreely feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and writefreely fits your workflow better
About Lemmy
Lemmy is a link aggregator and forum platform for the Fediverse, written in Rust and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It supports communities where users subscribe to forums, post links and discussions, vote, and comment. Each server can operate independently while remaining federated through ActivityPub, so users on one server can interact with users and communities on other servers.
read the full Lemmy overview →
About writefreely
WriteFreely is a clean, minimalist publishing platform made for writers, released under the AGPL 3.0 license and written in Go. It belongs to the fediverse: an ecosystem of federated publishing and social software that speaks ActivityPub, the same protocol used by Plume and other ActivityPub powered applications. An instance can be a single writer's blog, a shared internal knowledge base inside an organization, or a community built around the shared act of writing.
read the full writefreely overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lemmy or writefreely more popular?
Lemmy has 14,599 GitHub stars and writefreely has 5,250. Lemmy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lemmy and writefreely free?
Both are open source. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and writefreely under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lemmy and writefreely?
Lemmy is written in Rust and writefreely in Go. 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 writefreely?
Choose Lemmy if you want the larger community (14,599 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose writefreely if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.