head to head · open source
Mastodon vs URS
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars, 7,536 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. URS has 1,044 stars, 127 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 4,734% (50,465 vs 1,044 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.
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Side by side
| Mastodon | URS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-11 |
| 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 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
[!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 URS
U niversal R eddit S craper A comprehensive Reddit scraping command line tool written in Python. [ ][codecov] [ ][releases] Sponsors If this project has saved you time, consider sponsoring its development. MangoProxy provides residential, ISP, datacenter, and mobile proxies in 200+ countries. Trusted by businesses worldwide for stable connections, fast response times, and scalable proxy infrastructure. Use my affiliate link to sign up for an account, and use promo code JOSEPH to save 8% on Static ISP Proxies. RapidProxy is a global residential proxy platform built for scraping developers and data collection…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or URS more popular?
Mastodon has 50,465 GitHub stars and URS has 1,044. 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 (50,465 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose URS if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.