head to head · open source
Mastodon vs social
Mastodon has 50,492 GitHub stars, 7,541 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. social has 11 stars, 0 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 458,918% (50,492 vs 11 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; social is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, social 0%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (activitypub, fediverse, mastodon, 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 | social | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 11 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 0 |
| 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 social if
- You want the social feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and social 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 social
Nextcloud Social Your Nextcloud is a Fediverse server. Post, follow and reply across Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, GoToSocial and Akkoma — from the same place your files, calendar and chat already live. No new account. No new app. No algorithm. No advertising. Nextcloud Social gives every user on your server a real Fediverse identity — @you@your.cloud — that anyone on Mastodon can follow, mention and reply to. What you write leaves your server signed, and lands in their timeline. What they write comes back into yours. Nobody else holds it, nobody sells it, and nobody reorders it. It is a partial implementation…
read the full social overview →
More in Community & Social
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or social more popular?
Mastodon has 50,492 GitHub stars and social has 11. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and social free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and social under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and social?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and social in PHP. 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 social?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,492 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose social if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.