head to head · open source
Mastodon vs owncast
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. owncast has 11,644 stars, 1,194 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 333% (50,465 vs 11,644 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; owncast is written in Go under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, owncast 10%. 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 | owncast | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 owncast if
- You want the owncast feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and owncast 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 owncast
Take control over your content and stream it yourself. Explore the docs » View Demo · FAQ · Report Bug · Report Security Issue Table of Contents 📒 About the Project 🚀 Getting Started 👨💻 Use with your broadcasting software 🛠 Building from source 🚨 Important note about source code and the develop branch 🗄️ Backend ⚛️ Frontend 👏 Contributing 💵 Donors Security 📝 License Contact About The Project Owncast is an open source, self hosted, decentralized, single user live video streaming and chat server for running your own live streams similar in style to the large mainstream options. It offers complete…
read the full owncast overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or owncast more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and owncast has 11,644. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and owncast free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and owncast under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and owncast?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and owncast 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 owncast?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose owncast if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.