head to head · open source
Mastodon vs misskey
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. misskey has 11,366 stars, 1,640 forks, 2,535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mastodon leads on adoption by 344% (50,465 vs 11,366 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; misskey is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, misskey 14%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (activitypub, fediverse, microblog), 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 | misskey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 misskey if
- You want the misskey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and misskey 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 misskey
🌎 Misskey is an open source, federated social media platform that's free forever! 🚀 Learn more Thanks Thanks to Sentry for providing the error tracking platform that helps us catch unexpected errors. Thanks to Chromatic for providing the visual testing platform that helps us review UI changes and catch visual regressions. Thanks to Codecov for providing the code coverage platform that helps us improve our test coverage. Thanks to Crowdin for providing the localization platform that helps us translate Misskey into many languages. Thanks to Docker for providing the container platform that helps us run Misskey in…
read the full misskey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or misskey more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and misskey has 11,366. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and misskey free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and misskey under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and misskey?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and misskey 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 misskey?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose misskey if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.