head to head · open source
Pixelfed vs koala
Pixelfed has 7,138 GitHub stars, 896 forks, 116 open issues and last shipped yesterday. koala has 3,574 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Pixelfed leads on adoption by 100% (7,138 vs 3,574 stars). Pixelfed is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; koala is written in Ruby under MIT. Pixelfed has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, koala 13%. Pixelfed was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (social-network), 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
| Pixelfed | koala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.1K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 896 | ⑂ 456 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pixelfed if
- You weight community size — 7.1K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- 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 Pixelfed
Introduction Photo sharing the way it should be. Pixelfed lets your casual shots and creative photography find their audience naturally, without algorithmic barriers. Join millions of people sharing across the fediverse. Official Documentation Documentation for Pixelfed can be found on the Pixelfed documentation website. Run on YunoHost Pixelfed app for YunoHost. See the package source code License Pixelfed is open sourced software licensed under the AGPL license. Communication The ways you can communicate on the project are below. Before interacting, please read through the Code Of Conduct. Mastodon…
read the full Pixelfed 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 Pixelfed or koala more popular?
Pixelfed has 7,138 GitHub stars and koala has 3,574. Pixelfed has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pixelfed and koala free?
Both are open source. Pixelfed is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and koala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pixelfed and koala?
Pixelfed is written in PHP 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, Pixelfed or koala?
Choose Pixelfed if you want the larger community (7,138 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.