Invidious vs yarn.social
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?
Invidious
Alternative front-end to YouTube
VS
yarn.social
Self-Hosted, Twitter™-like Decentralised micro-logging platform
| Feature | Invidious | yarn.social |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Social Networks | Social Networks |
| License | GPL-3.0-only | MIT |
| Language | Crystal | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 50 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal | bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 22,442 | — |
| First released | 2023 | 2020 |
| Replaces | YouTube | — |
Why pick each one
Choose Invidious if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0-only license
- Mature project with 22.4k GitHub stars
- Written in Crystal
- Tiny footprint — runs in 50 MB RAM
Choose yarn.social if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Written in Go
- Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Invidious or yarn.social better?
Neither is universally better. Invidious has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Invidious and yarn.social free and open-source?
Yes. Invidious is licensed under GPL-3.0-only and yarn.social under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Invidious and yarn.social with Docker?
Invidious: check the project docs for container support. yarn.social: check the project docs for container support.