head to head · open source
Mastodon vs deltachat-desktop
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deltachat-desktop has 1,631 stars, 253 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mastodon leads on adoption by 2,994% (50,465 vs 1,631 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; deltachat-desktop is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, deltachat-desktop 16%. deltachat-desktop 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
| Mastodon | deltachat-desktop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 253 |
| 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 deltachat-desktop if
- You want the deltachat-desktop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and deltachat-desktop 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 deltachat-desktop
Delta Chat Desktop Desktop Application for delta.chat Editions There is a third, WIP edition based on Tauri instead of Electron. It lives in its own repository — deltachat tauri — and consumes this repository's frontend through a pinned upstream/ submodule. See Fediverse Thread and Delta Tauri nlnet project. Documentation Links For Users Troubleshooting CLI flags Keybindings How to make custom Themes For Developers Contribution Guidelines Logging Documentation for Developers Styling Guidelines How to update core How to do end to end testing How to do a release Table of Contents Click to expand Delta Chat Desktop…
read the full deltachat-desktop overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or deltachat-desktop more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and deltachat-desktop has 1,631. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and deltachat-desktop free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and deltachat-desktop under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and deltachat-desktop?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and deltachat-desktop 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 deltachat-desktop?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose deltachat-desktop if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.