Hometown vs Streams
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted social networks options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Hometown | Streams |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Category | Social Networks | Social Networks |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Ruby | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 823 | ★ 100 |
| First released | 2019 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Twitter, Mastodon | Facebook, Mastodon |
What are Hometown and Streams?
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
Streams
Streams is a free, decentralized social communication server that supports nomadic identity, letting accounts move and clone between instances. It federates with the fediverse and offers fine-grained permissions.
- Nomadic identity
- Account cloning across servers
- Fediverse federation
- Granular permissions
Hometown vs Streams: key differences
Hometown is written in Ruby, while Streams is built with PHP. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Hometown versus MIT for Streams. Streams is the lighter option, starting around 1,024 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Hometown. Hometown is the more established project (first released 2019), while Streams arrived in 2021. Hometown has the considerably larger community, at 823 GitHub stars versus 100.
Why pick each one
Choose Hometown if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Ruby
Choose Streams if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in PHP
Frequently asked questions
Is Hometown or Streams 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 Hometown and Streams free and open-source?
Yes. Hometown is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Streams under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Hometown and Streams with Docker?
Hometown: yes. Streams: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Hometown or Streams?
Streams has the smaller minimum footprint at 1,024 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Hometown. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.