Hometown vs Takahe
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted social networks options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Hometown | Takahe |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 81 · Excellent | 18 · At risk |
| Category | Social Networks | Social Networks |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | Ruby | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 823 | ★ 1,172 |
| First released | 2019 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Twitter, Mastodon | Twitter, Mastodon |
What are Hometown and Takahe?
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
Takahe
Takahe is an ActivityPub server that can host multiple domains and identities from a single deployment. It is designed for those who want to run several fediverse personas without separate installations.
- Multi-domain hosting
- Multiple identities per user
- Stateless workers
- ActivityPub federation
Hometown vs Takahe: key differences
Hometown is written in Ruby, while Takahe is built with Python. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Hometown versus BSD-3-Clause for Takahe. Takahe 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 Takahe arrived in 2022.
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 Takahe if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.2k GitHub stars)
- Written in Python
Frequently asked questions
Is Hometown or Takahe better?
Takahe is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Hometown if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Hometown and Takahe free and open-source?
Yes. Hometown is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Takahe under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Hometown and Takahe with Docker?
Hometown: yes. Takahe: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Hometown or Takahe?
Takahe 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.