head to head · open source
misskey vs writefreely
misskey has 11,326 GitHub stars, 1,615 forks, 2,535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. writefreely has 5,254 stars, 398 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. misskey leads on adoption by 116% (11,326 vs 5,254 stars). misskey is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; writefreely is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. misskey has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, writefreely 8%. misskey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (activitypub, federation), 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
| misskey | writefreely | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 398 |
| 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 writefreely if
- You want the writefreely feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and writefreely fits your workflow better
About misskey
Misskey is an open source, federated social media platform that is free forever, released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It is written in TypeScript and lives in the fediverse, the network of interoperable social platforms built on the ActivityPub protocol. The project has been developed for roughly ten years and carries the topics activitypub, federation, fediverse, microblog, and misskey. Its homepage and documentation hub is hosted at misskey hub.net.
read the full misskey overview →
About writefreely
WriteFreely is a clean, minimalist publishing platform made for writers, released under the AGPL 3.0 license and written in Go. It belongs to the fediverse: an ecosystem of federated publishing and social software that speaks ActivityPub, the same protocol used by Plume and other ActivityPub powered applications. An instance can be a single writer's blog, a shared internal knowledge base inside an organization, or a community built around the shared act of writing.
read the full writefreely overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is misskey or writefreely more popular?
misskey has 11,326 GitHub stars and writefreely has 5,254. misskey has the larger community by that measure.
Are misskey and writefreely free?
Both are open source. misskey is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and writefreely under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between misskey and writefreely?
misskey is written in TypeScript and writefreely in Go. 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 writefreely?
Choose misskey if you want the larger community (11,326 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose writefreely if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.