head to head · open source
Mastodon vs voyager
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars, 7,498 forks, 4,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. voyager has 1,810 stars, 174 forks, 256 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Mastodon leads on adoption by 2,679% (50,299 vs 1,810 stars). Mastodon is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; voyager is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Mastodon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, voyager 10%. Mastodon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (activitypub, fediverse), 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 | voyager | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.5K | ⑂ 174 |
| 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 voyager if
- You want the voyager 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 voyager 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 voyager
Voyager is a mobile first web client for Lemmy and Piefed. It lives in the Fediverse and ActivityPub ecosystem. The project is written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL 3.0. It uses React, Ionic, Capacitor, and PWA patterns to run on iOS, Android, and desktop browsers. It is an Apollo like open source client for Lemmy.
read the full voyager overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mastodon or voyager more popular?
Mastodon has 50,299 GitHub stars and voyager has 1,810. Mastodon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mastodon and voyager free?
Both are open source. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and voyager under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mastodon and voyager?
Mastodon is written in Ruby and voyager 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 voyager?
Choose Mastodon if you want the larger community (50,299 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose voyager if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.