diaspora* vs Element
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted social networks options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare diaspora* with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy Nitter Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Loomio Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Endurain Manyfold phpBB Movim Elgg Friendica Mobilizon Phanpy Firefish OSSN Bridgy Fed Takahe Microblog.pub Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Smithereen Postmarks Mastodon Bird UI Wavelog Hollo Gathio Loops Snikket Ktistec Libremdb Mbin Trustroots Akkoma Gancio Honk Socialhome Hubzilla Epicyon Iceshrimp mlmym Wafrn GoBlog Hatsu BuddyPress Sphinx Relay noStrudel Mitra lemmyBB Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Sublinks Buddycloud Libervia Zap Nostr Relay Squeaknode Khatru Pyramid Catodon Route96 Osada usocial Tesseract AsmBB Bloat Forte GoToSocial Iceshrimp.NET Masto-FE (🦥 flavour) Peachpub PeerTube search-index Snort yarn.social
Compare Element with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy Nitter Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Loomio Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Endurain Manyfold phpBB Elgg Friendica Mobilizon Phanpy Firefish OSSN Bridgy Fed Takahe Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Smithereen Postmarks Mastodon Bird UI Wavelog Hollo Gathio Loops Snikket Ktistec Libremdb Mbin Trustroots Akkoma Gancio Honk Socialhome Hubzilla Epicyon Iceshrimp mlmym Wafrn GoBlog Hatsu BuddyPress Sphinx Relay noStrudel Mitra lemmyBB Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Sublinks Buddycloud Zap Nostr Relay Squeaknode Khatru Pyramid Catodon Route96 Osada usocial Tesseract AsmBB Bloat Forte GoToSocial Iceshrimp.NET Masto-FE (🦥 flavour) PeerTube search-index Snort yarn.social
Feature diaspora* Element Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 free Language Ruby TypeScript Setup difficulty Hard Easy Min. RAM 1,024 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, one-click GitHub stars ★ 13,656 ★ 13,353 First released 2010 2022 Replaces Facebook, Twitter —
Why pick each one
Choose Element if… Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment One-click install on common self-host platforms Mature project with 13.4k GitHub stars Element details
Frequently asked questions Is diaspora* or Element better? Neither is universally better. diaspora* has the larger community, while Element is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are diaspora* and Element free and open-source? Yes. diaspora* is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Element under free. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run diaspora* and Element with Docker? diaspora*: yes. Element: yes.