Open source federation projects

Every project in the registry tagged federation, ranked by real GitHub adoption.

projects 9 combined stars ★ 82K refresh nightly
01 Nextcloud ★ 37K

Secure cloud collaboration platform for organizations

last push5 hours ago languagePHP licenseAGPL-3.0
02 owncast ★ 12K

Take control over your live stream video by running it yourself. Streaming + chat out of the box.

last push41 hours ago languageGo licenseMIT
03 misskey ★ 11K

🌎 A completely free and open interplanetary-microblogging platform 🚀

last push5 hours ago languageTypeScript licenseAGPL-3.0
04 Pixelfed ★ 7.1K

Ad-free photo sharing with privacy and federation

last push8 hours ago languagePHP licenseAGPL-3.0
05 writefreely ★ 5.3K

A clean, Markdown-based publishing platform made for writers. Write together and build a community.

last push13 days ago languageGo licenseAGPL-3.0
06 mcp-context-forge ★ 4.5K

An AI Gateway, registry, and proxy that sits in front of any MCP, A2A, or REST/gRPC APIs, exposing a unified endpoint with centralized discovery, guardrails and

last push9 hours ago languagePython licenseApache-2.0
07 BookWyrm ★ 2.8K

Decentralized social network for book lovers and readers

last push8 hours ago languagePython license
08 pump.io ★ 2.2K

Social server with an ActivityStreams API

last push7 months ago languageJavaScript licenseApache-2.0
09 Hive ★ 483

Open-source GraphQL federation platform

last push6 hours ago languageTypeScript licenseMIT

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Frequently asked questions

How many open source federation projects are there?

This registry tracks 9 projects tagged federation, with 82,029 GitHub stars between them. The most-adopted is Nextcloud at 36,828 stars.

Are these federation projects free to use?

Yes — 8 of the 9 carry an explicit open-source licence across 3 distinct licences, so there is no licence fee. Where a project also sells a hosted or enterprise version, the self-hosted path remains free.

Which federation project should I choose?

The list above is ranked by GitHub stars, but stars measure attention rather than fit. Check three things on each card: the licence (permissive versus copyleft), the language it is written in, and the last-push date — a high-star project that has not been pushed in a year is a liability.

Are these federation projects still maintained?

8 of the 9 were pushed in the last 90 days, and every card shows its exact last-push date so you can see the rest. Sort your shortlist by that date before committing to a migration.