head to head · open source
misskey vs koala
misskey has 11,368 GitHub stars, 1,641 forks, 2,535 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. koala has 3,574 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. misskey leads on adoption by 218% (11,368 vs 3,574 stars). misskey is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; koala is written in Ruby under MIT. misskey has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, koala 13%. misskey 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
| misskey | koala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 456 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick misskey if
- You weight community size — 11K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick koala if
- You want the koala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and koala fits your workflow better
About misskey
🌎 Misskey is an open source, federated social media platform that's free forever! 🚀 Learn more Thanks Thanks to Sentry for providing the error tracking platform that helps us catch unexpected errors. Thanks to Chromatic for providing the visual testing platform that helps us review UI changes and catch visual regressions. Thanks to Codecov for providing the code coverage platform that helps us improve our test coverage. Thanks to Crowdin for providing the localization platform that helps us translate Misskey into many languages. Thanks to Docker for providing the container platform that helps us run Misskey in…
read the full misskey overview →
About koala
Koala ==== Koala is a Facebook library for Ruby, supporting the Graph API (including the batch requests and photo uploads), the Marketing API, the Atlas API, realtime updates, test users, and OAuth validation. We wrote Koala with four goals: Lightweight: Koala should be as light and simple as Facebook’s own libraries, providing API accessors and returning simple JSON. Fast: Koala should, out of the box, be quick. Out of the box, we use Facebook's faster read only servers when possible and if available, the Typhoeus gem to make snappy Facebook requests. Of course, that brings us to our next topic: Flexible: Koala…
read the full koala overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is misskey or koala more popular?
misskey has 11,368 GitHub stars and koala has 3,574. misskey has the larger community by that measure.
Are misskey and koala free?
Both are open source. misskey is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and koala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between misskey and koala?
misskey is written in TypeScript and koala in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, misskey or koala?
Choose misskey if you want the larger community (11,368 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.