Glitch-soc vs Hometown
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted social networks options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Glitch-soc | Hometown |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 81 · Excellent | 81 · Excellent |
| Category | Social Networks | Social Networks |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Ruby | Ruby |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 803 | ★ 823 |
| First released | 2017 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Twitter, Mastodon | Twitter, Mastodon |
What are Glitch-soc and Hometown?
Glitch-soc
Glitch-soc is a community-maintained fork of Mastodon that adds experimental features and customization options ahead of upstream. It federates fully with the rest of the fediverse over ActivityPub.
- Extra customization options
- Experimental features
- Full fediverse federation
- Themeable interface
Hometown
Hometown is a friendly fork of Mastodon that adds local-only posting, full-text content support, and other community-oriented features. It is aimed at small, close-knit fediverse instances.
- Local-only posts
- Full-text content
- Mastodon compatibility
- Small-community focus
Glitch-soc vs Hometown: key differences
Both projects are written in Ruby. Glitch-soc is the more established project (first released 2017), while Hometown arrived in 2019.
Why pick each one
Choose Glitch-soc if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Ruby
Choose Hometown if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Ruby
Frequently asked questions
Is Glitch-soc or Hometown better?
Neither is universally better. Hometown has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Glitch-soc and Hometown free and open-source?
Yes. Glitch-soc is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Hometown under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Glitch-soc and Hometown with Docker?
Glitch-soc: yes. Hometown: yes.