Lemmy vs Pixelfed
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 Lemmy with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Forem Invidious NodeBB diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Fizzy 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 kbin 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
Compare Pixelfed with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious NodeBB diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Fizzy Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Loomio Artalk pump.io Loops Friendiqa Hub Peachpub
Feature Lemmy Pixelfed Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language Rust PHP Setup difficulty Medium Hard Min. RAM 512 MB 1,024 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 14,538 ★ 7,055 First released 2019 2018 Replaces Reddit Instagram
Why pick each one
Choose Lemmy if… Reddit-like experience Efficient resource use Lemmy details
Frequently asked questions Is Lemmy or Pixelfed better? Lemmy is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Pixelfed if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Lemmy and Pixelfed free and open-source? Yes. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Pixelfed under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Lemmy and Pixelfed with Docker? Lemmy: yes. Pixelfed: yes.