head to head · open source
Mastodon vs fedify
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fedify has 1,030 stars, 144 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mastodon leads on adoption by 4,800% (50,465 vs 1,030 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; fedify is written in TypeScript under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, fedify 14%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (activitypub, fediverse), 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
| Mastodon | fedify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 144 |
| 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 fedify if
- You want the fedify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and fedify 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 fedify
Fedify: an ActivityPub server framework ======================================================= [![JSR][JSR badge]][JSR] [![npm][npm badge]][npm] [![GitHub Actions][GitHub Actions badge]][GitHub Actions] [![Matrix][Matrix badge]][Matrix] [![@fedify@hackers.pub][@fedify@hackers.pub badge]][@fedify@hackers.pub] Fedify is a TypeScript library for building federated server apps powered by [ActivityPub] and other standards, so called [fediverse].[^1] It aims to eliminate the complexity and boilerplate code when building a federated server app, so that you can focus on your business logic and user experience…
read the full fedify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or fedify more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and fedify has 1,030. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and fedify free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and fedify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and fedify?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and fedify 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 fedify?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose fedify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.