head to head · open source
maigret vs writefreely
maigret has 37,735 GitHub stars, 2,959 forks, 62 open issues and last shipped yesterday. writefreely has 5,250 stars, 398 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. maigret leads on adoption by 619% (37,735 vs 5,250 stars). maigret is written in Python under MIT; writefreely is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. maigret has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, writefreely 8%. maigret 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
| maigret | writefreely | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 398 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick maigret if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 maigret
Maigret is an open source Python OSINT tool that builds a dossier on a person from a username alone, checking for accounts across more than 3,000 sites without requiring API keys — it is aimed at OSINT analysts, pentesters, infosec teams, and investigators.
read the full maigret 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 maigret or writefreely more popular?
maigret has 37,735 GitHub stars and writefreely has 5,250. maigret has the larger community by that measure.
Are maigret and writefreely free?
Both are open source. maigret is licensed under MIT and writefreely under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between maigret and writefreely?
maigret is written in Python 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, maigret or writefreely?
Choose maigret if you want the larger community (37,735 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose writefreely if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.