Glitch-soc vs Honk
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 | Honk |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Category | Social Networks | Social Networks |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | ISC |
| Language | Ruby | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 803 | ★ 400 |
| First released | 2017 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Twitter, Mastodon | Twitter, Mastodon |
What are Glitch-soc and Honk?
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
Honk
Honk is an opinionated, single-user ActivityPub server written in Go that federates with the wider fediverse. It deliberately omits algorithmic feeds and trends in favor of a simple chronological timeline.
- Single-user fediverse server
- Chronological timeline
- SQLite storage
- Minimal dependencies
Glitch-soc vs Honk: key differences
Glitch-soc is written in Ruby, while Honk is built with Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Glitch-soc versus ISC for Honk. Honk is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Glitch-soc. Glitch-soc is the more established project (first released 2017), while Honk arrived in 2019. Glitch-soc has the considerably larger community, at 803 GitHub stars versus 400. Glitch-soc lists first-class Docker deployment; Honk does not.
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 Honk if…
- Released under the ISC license
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Glitch-soc or Honk better?
Neither is universally better. Glitch-soc has the larger community, while Honk is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Glitch-soc and Honk free and open-source?
Yes. Glitch-soc is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Honk under ISC. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Glitch-soc and Honk with Docker?
Glitch-soc: yes. Honk: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, Glitch-soc or Honk?
Honk has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Glitch-soc. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.