head to head · open source
Mastodon vs praw
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. praw has 4,290 stars, 504 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 1,076% (50,465 vs 4,290 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; praw is written in Python under BSD-2-Clause. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, praw 12%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | praw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Ruby | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 504 |
| 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 praw if
- You want the praw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and praw 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 praw
PRAW: The Python Reddit API Wrapper .. image:: :alt: Latest PRAW Version :target: .. image:: :alt: Supported Python Versions :target: .. image:: :alt: PyPI Downloads Monthly :target: .. image:: :alt: GitHub Actions Status :target: .. image:: :alt: OpenSSF Scorecard :target: .. image:: :alt: Contributor Covenant :target: .. image:: :alt: pre commit :target: .. image:: :alt: Ruff :target: PRAW, an acronym for "Python Reddit API Wrapper", is a Python package that allows for simple access to Reddit's API. PRAW aims to be easy to use and internally follows all of Reddit's API rules . With PRAW there's no need to…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or praw more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and praw has 4,290. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and praw free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and praw under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and praw?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and praw in Python. 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 praw?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose praw if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.