Lemmy vs Zap
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 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 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 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 Zap with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious NodeBB diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Movim Friendica Smithereen Socialhome Hubzilla Streams Libervia Osada Forte Peachpub
Feature Lemmy Zap Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 MIT Language Rust PHP Setup difficulty Medium Hard Min. RAM 512 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 14,538 ★ 50 First released 2019 2018 Replaces Reddit Facebook, Twitter
Why pick each one
Choose Lemmy if… Reddit-like experience Efficient resource use Lemmy details Choose Zap if… Released under the MIT license Written in PHP Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM Zap details
Frequently asked questions Is Lemmy or Zap better? Lemmy is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Zap if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Lemmy and Zap free and open-source? Yes. Lemmy is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Zap under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Lemmy and Zap with Docker? Lemmy: yes. Zap: check the project docs for container support.