head to head · open source
Mastodon vs haven
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haven has 813 stars, 50 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 6,107% (50,465 vs 813 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; haven is written in Ruby under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, haven 6%. Mastodon 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.
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Side by side
| Mastodon | haven | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 813 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 haven if
- You want the haven feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and haven 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 haven
Haven Haven is a private blog application built with Ruby on Rails. Write what you want, create accounts for people you want to share with, keep up with each other using built in RSS. Try out a live demo at The following are some motivating philosophies: Open source. MIT License Privacy first. This is for sharing with friends and family, not commercial endevors. If you want a blog for your company, you probably want to use WordPress or Ghost instead. Easy to use. Built in web interface for managing users, customizing the blog, and writing/editing posts with markdown and live preview. Low bandwidth friendly…
read the full haven overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or haven more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and haven has 813. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and haven free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and haven under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and haven?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and haven in Ruby. 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 haven?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose haven if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.