head to head · open source
Mastodon vs amethyst
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. amethyst has 1,617 stars, 227 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mastodon leads on adoption by 3,021% (50,465 vs 1,617 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; amethyst is written in Kotlin under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, amethyst 14%. amethyst was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (social-network), 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
| Mastodon | amethyst | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 227 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Mastodon if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick amethyst if
- You want the amethyst feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and amethyst fits your workflow better
About Mastodon
[!NOTE] Want to learn more about Mastodon? Click below to find out more in a video. Mastodon is a free, open source social network server based on ActivityPub where users can follow friends and discover new ones. On Mastodon, users can publish anything they want: links, pictures, text, and video. All Mastodon servers are interoperable as a federated network (users on one server can seamlessly communicate with users from another one, including non Mastodon software that implements ActivityPub!) Navigation Project homepage 🐘 Donate to support development 🎁 View sponsors Blog 📰 Documentation 📚 Official…
read the full Mastodon overview →
About amethyst
Amethyst Nostr Client for Android Join the social network you control. Download and Install Android Desktop Coming soon (separate PR): Scoop (Windows), AUR (Arch Linux). Build from source: see BUILDING.md. Install troubleshooting (Gatekeeper / SmartScreen / AppImage): see BUILDING.md § Troubleshooting installs. Verifying the APK signature If you sideload Amethyst (Obtainium, GitHub Releases, Zap Store), verify that your APK is signed by the official release key before installing. All official Amethyst APKs — both the googleplay and fdroid flavors — are signed with the same certificate, whose SHA 256 fingerprint…
read the full amethyst 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 Mastodon or amethyst more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and amethyst has 1,617. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and amethyst free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and amethyst under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and amethyst?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and amethyst in Kotlin. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Mastodon or amethyst?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose amethyst if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.