head to head · open source
Mastodon vs postmarks
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postmarks has 547 stars, 43 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 9,126% (50,465 vs 547 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; postmarks is written in JavaScript under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, postmarks 8%. 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, mastodon), 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 | postmarks | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 547 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 43 |
| 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 postmarks if
- You want the postmarks feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and postmarks 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 postmarks
Postmarks About this project Postmarks is a bookmarking site that you own yourself and can connect the Fediverse, interacting with other Postmarks sites as well as Mastodon/FireFish/any text based ActivityPub platform. You can read more about it here: Getting Started Ethos Future Ideas The site allows the owner to add, edit and delete bookmarks, but only if a valid login is provided. Check the setup below to understand how to do that! Setting up your site To set your app up: Create a .env file in the root of the project. Add the line PUBLIC BASE URL= to your .env where \ is the hostname of your instance. Add the…
read the full postmarks overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or postmarks more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and postmarks has 547. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and postmarks free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and postmarks under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and postmarks?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and postmarks in JavaScript. 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 postmarks?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose postmarks if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.