head to head · open source
owncast vs writefreely
owncast has 11,543 GitHub stars, 1,180 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. writefreely has 5,254 stars, 398 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. owncast leads on adoption by 120% (11,543 vs 5,254 stars). owncast is written in Go under MIT; writefreely is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. owncast has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, writefreely 8%. writefreely 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
| owncast | writefreely | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 398 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick owncast if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 owncast
Owncast is an open source, self hosted, single user live video streaming and chat server written in Go, with a React frontend, released under the MIT license. It positions itself as a way to run your own live streams in a style similar to the large mainstream streaming services, while keeping complete ownership over your content, interface, moderation, and audience. The project lives in the fediverse: its topic list covers ActivityPub, federation, and decentralized networking, placing it alongside other federated social software rather than inside a proprietary platform.
read the full owncast 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 owncast or writefreely more popular?
owncast has 11,543 GitHub stars and writefreely has 5,254. owncast has the larger community by that measure.
Are owncast and writefreely free?
Both are open source. owncast is licensed under MIT and writefreely under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between owncast and writefreely?
owncast is written in Go 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, owncast or writefreely?
Choose owncast if you want the larger community (11,543 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose writefreely if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.