head to head · open source
Mastodon vs talkyard
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars, 7,498 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. talkyard has 1,812 stars, 129 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 2,676% (50,299 vs 1,812 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 129 |
| 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
Mastodon is a free, open source, self hosted social network server built on ActivityPub that lets anyone run a microblogging community which interoperates with the wider Fediverse, and it is aimed at individuals, communities, and organisations that want to own their social graph instead of renting it from a platform.
read the full Mastodon overview →
About talkyard
Talkyard is a community discussion platform written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL 3.0. It describes itself as forum software with chat and anonymous comments, and its topics connect it to StackOverflow style questions and answers, Slack style chat, Discourse style forums, Reddit style voting, and Disqus style blog comments.
read the full talkyard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or talkyard more popular?
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars and talkyard has 1,812. 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 (50,299 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.