diaspora* vs Mastodon
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… Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy Nitter Element 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 Mastodon with
choose an app… Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy Nitter Element 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 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 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* Mastodon Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language Ruby Ruby Setup difficulty Hard Hard Min. RAM 1,024 MB 2,048 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 13,656 ★ 50,177 First released 2010 2016 Replaces Facebook, Twitter Twitter, X
Why pick each one
Choose Mastodon if… Large fediverse network Strong moderation features Mastodon details
Frequently asked questions Is diaspora* or Mastodon better? Neither is universally better. Mastodon has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are diaspora* and Mastodon free and open-source? Yes. diaspora* is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Mastodon under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run diaspora* and Mastodon with Docker? diaspora*: yes. Mastodon: yes.