head to head · open source
Mastodon vs Bluesky
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bluesky has 18,364 stars, 2,872 forks, 2,400 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mastodon leads on adoption by 175% (50,465 vs 18,364 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; Bluesky is written in TypeScript under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Bluesky 16%. Bluesky 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Mastodon | Bluesky | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 18K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 2.9K |
| 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 Bluesky if
- You want the Bluesky feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Bluesky 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 Bluesky
Bluesky Social App Welcome friends! This is the codebase for the Bluesky Social app. Get the app itself: Web: bsky.app iOS: App Store Android: Play Store Development Resources This is a React Native application, written in the TypeScript programming language. It builds on the atproto TypeScript packages (like @atproto/api ), which are also open source, but in a different git repository. There is a small amount of Go language source code (in ./bskyweb/ ), for a web service that returns the React Native Web application. The Build Instructions are a good place to get started with the app itself. The Authenticated…
read the full Bluesky 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 Bluesky more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and Bluesky has 18,364. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and Bluesky free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Bluesky under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and Bluesky?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and Bluesky 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, Mastodon or Bluesky?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Bluesky if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.