head to head · open source
Mastodon vs URS
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars, 7,498 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. URS has 1,025 stars, 124 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 4,807% (50,299 vs 1,025 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; URS is written in Python under MIT. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, URS 12%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Mastodon | URS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 124 |
| 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 URS if
- You want the URS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and URS 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 URS
URS (Universal Reddit Scraper) is a free, MIT licensed Python command line tool for scraping, archiving, and livestreaming Reddit, aimed at researchers, data scientists, archivists, and OSINT analysts who need structured local copies of subreddit and redditor activity.
More in Community & Social
Related comparisons
More Social Networking projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Social Networking field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or URS more popular?
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars and URS has 1,025. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and URS free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and URS under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and URS?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and URS in Python. 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 URS?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,299 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose URS if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.