kbin vs Lemmy
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?
Compare kbin with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Forem Invidious NodeBB diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Lobsters Tildes PieFed Discuit Lemmy-UI Alternative Photon Mbin mlmym lemmyBB Lemmy-Easy-Deploy Sublinks Throat Tesseract
Compare Lemmy with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Forem Invidious NodeBB diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Lobsters Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Loomio Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Endurain Manyfold phpBB Elgg Friendica Mobilizon Phanpy Firefish OSSN Bridgy Fed Takahe Fedify Tildes snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy PieFed Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Smithereen Discuit Postmarks Lemmy-UI Alternative Photon Mastodon Bird UI Wavelog Hollo Gathio Loops Snikket Ktistec Libremdb Mbin Trustroots Akkoma Gancio Honk Socialhome Hubzilla Epicyon Iceshrimp mlmym Wafrn GoBlog Hatsu BuddyPress Sphinx Relay noStrudel Mitra lemmyBB Lemmy-Easy-Deploy Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Sublinks Throat Buddycloud Zap Nostr Relay Squeaknode Khatru Pyramid Catodon Route96 Osada usocial Tesseract AsmBB Bloat Forte GoToSocial Iceshrimp.NET Masto-FE (🦥 flavour) PeerTube search-index Snort yarn.social
Feature kbin Lemmy Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language PHP Rust Setup difficulty Hard Medium Min. RAM 1,024 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 600 ★ 14,538 First released 2020 2019 Replaces Reddit Reddit
Why pick each one
Choose kbin if… Combines forum and microblog Federates widely kbin details Choose Lemmy if… Reddit-like experience Efficient resource use Lemmy details
Frequently asked questions Is kbin or Lemmy better? Lemmy is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider kbin if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are kbin and Lemmy free and open-source? Yes. kbin is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Lemmy under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run kbin and Lemmy with Docker? kbin: yes. Lemmy: yes.