head to head · open source
Mastodon vs glance
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. glance has 37,981 stars, 1,506 forks, 318 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mastodon leads on adoption by 33% (50,465 vs 37,981 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; glance is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, glance 4%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), 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 | glance | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 38K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 glance if
- You want the glance 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 glance 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 glance
Glance Install • Configuration • Discord • Sponsor Community widgets • Preconfigured pages • Themes A lightweight, highly customizable dashboard that displays your feeds in a beautiful, streamlined interface Features Various widgets RSS feeds Subreddit posts Hacker News posts Weather forecasts YouTube channel uploads Twitch channels Market prices Docker containers status Server stats Custom widgets and many more... Fast and lightweight Low memory usage Few dependencies Minimal vanilla JS Single Configuration Configuration is done through YAML files, to learn more about how the layout works, how to add more pages…
read the full glance overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or glance more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and glance has 37,981. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and glance free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and glance under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and glance?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and glance 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, Mastodon or glance?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose glance if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.