head to head · open source
Mastodon vs omnom
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars, 7,498 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. omnom has 663 stars, 41 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 7,487% (50,299 vs 663 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; omnom is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, omnom 6%. 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 | omnom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 663 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-06-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 41 |
| 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 omnom if
- You want the omnom 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 omnom fits your workflow better
About Mastodon
Mastodon is a free, open source, self hosted social network server built on ActivityPub that lets anyone run a microblogging community which interoperates with the wider Fediverse, and it is aimed at individuals, communities, and organisations that want to own their social graph instead of renting it from a platform.
read the full Mastodon overview →
About omnom
Omnom is a self hosted, AGPL 3.0 web content preservation service written in Go that bookmarks pages together with browser rendered snapshots, aggregates feeds, and follows ActivityPub streams, built for individuals and small teams who want their reading, archiving, and fediverse following to live on infrastructure they control.
read the full omnom overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or omnom more popular?
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars and omnom has 663. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and omnom free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and omnom under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and omnom?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and omnom 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 omnom?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,299 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose omnom if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.