head to head · open source
writefreely vs koala
writefreely has 5,283 GitHub stars, 408 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. koala has 3,574 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. writefreely leads on adoption by 48% (5,283 vs 3,574 stars). writefreely is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; koala is written in Ruby under MIT. writefreely has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, koala 13%. writefreely 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
| writefreely | koala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.3K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 408 | ⑂ 456 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick writefreely if
- You weight community size — 5.3K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 writefreely
WriteFreely is a clean, minimalist publishing platform made for writers. Start a blog, share knowledge within your organization, or build a community around the shared act of writing. Try the writing experience Find an instance Features Made for writing Built on a plain, auto saving editor, WriteFreely gives you a distraction free writing environment. Once published, your words are front and center, and easy to read. A connected community Start writing together, publicly or privately. Connect with other communities, whether running WriteFreely, Plume, or other ActivityPub powered software. And bring members on…
read the full writefreely 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 writefreely or koala more popular?
writefreely has 5,283 GitHub stars and koala has 3,574. writefreely has the larger community by that measure.
Are writefreely and koala free?
Both are open source. writefreely is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and koala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between writefreely and koala?
writefreely is written in Go 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, writefreely or koala?
Choose writefreely if you want the larger community (5,283 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.