Mastodon vs Misskey
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 Mastodon with
choose an app… Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite 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 Microblog.pub Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Smithereen Postmarks 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 Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Sublinks 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 Misskey with
choose an app… Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite 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 Microblog.pub Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Smithereen Postmarks Mastodon Bird UI Wavelog Chyrp Lite 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 Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Sublinks 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 Mastodon Misskey Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language Ruby TypeScript Setup difficulty Hard Hard Min. RAM 2,048 MB 2,048 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 50,177 ★ 11,271 First released 2016 2014 Replaces Twitter, X Twitter, Tumblr
Why pick each one
Choose Mastodon if… Large fediverse network Strong moderation features Mastodon details Choose Misskey if… Rich, playful feature set Active development Misskey details
Frequently asked questions Is Mastodon or Misskey better? Neither is universally better. Mastodon has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Mastodon and Misskey free and open-source? Yes. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Misskey under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Mastodon and Misskey with Docker? Mastodon: yes. Misskey: yes.