head to head · open source
Mastodon vs social-network
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. social-network has 637 stars, 135 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 7,822% (50,465 vs 637 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; social-network is written in JavaScript under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, social-network 21%. 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 | social-network | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 637 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 135 |
| 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-network if
- You want the social-network feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and social-network 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-network
social network Mini social network that I made as my first web app project. Demo social network Screenshots Gif Link to a full video Video Built With React A JavaScript library for building user interfaces Redux State managment Semantic UI React UI Socket.io Used for realtime features Node Used for backend Mongodb Database Features Like posts, comments, replies See likes for posts, comments, replies Follow, unfollow Update user information Search users Tag people on post and in comments with autocomplete Send verification email Pagination for home feed, user profile, hashtag page, location page, notifications…
read the full social-network overview →
More in Community & Social
Related comparisons
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Compare either of these against the rest of the Social Networking field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or social-network more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and social-network has 637. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and social-network free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and social-network under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and social-network?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and social-network 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 social-network?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose social-network if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.