head to head · open source
Mastodon vs talkyard
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. talkyard has 1,814 stars, 127 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 2,682% (50,465 vs 1,814 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; talkyard is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, talkyard 7%. 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 | talkyard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 127 |
| 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 talkyard if
- You want the talkyard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and talkyard 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 talkyard
Talkyard ============================= Forum software, with chat, and anonymous comments. Thoughtful discussions.  Insightful comments rise to the top. Upvote ideas.  Sort by votes. Question Answers.  Discuss, select an answer. Chat channels.  Pretty basic features. Blog comments.  Listen to your readers. How does it compare with other software?   Find out here . Self Hosting:   See talkyard prod one Demo:   Discussion forum:   Documentation:   (incomplete) Development:   That's this repo! See: docs/developing talkyard.md Features Good…
read the full talkyard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or talkyard more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and talkyard has 1,814. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and talkyard free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and talkyard under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and talkyard?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and talkyard in TypeScript. 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 talkyard?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose talkyard if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.