head to head · open source
Mastodon vs sharer.js
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sharer.js has 2,096 stars, 202 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 2,308% (50,465 vs 2,096 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; sharer.js is written in JavaScript under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, sharer.js 10%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (social-network), 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 | sharer.js | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 202 |
| 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 sharer.js if
- You want the sharer.js feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and sharer.js 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 sharer.js
sharer.js Using Sharer.js on your project? Let me know! Sharer.js is a very tiny JS library to create custom social share components on DOM elements for your website. No dependencies. Documentation Checkout the docs page for more info about installing and usage.
read the full sharer.js overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or sharer.js more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and sharer.js has 2,096. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and sharer.js free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and sharer.js under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and sharer.js?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and sharer.js 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 sharer.js?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sharer.js if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.