Mastodon vs Piped
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 Misskey 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 Piped with
choose an app… Discourse Invidious PeerTube NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Tube Archivist Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely Pinchflat LibReddit MediaCMS 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 Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Damselfly Web 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 Tube yarn.social
Feature Mastodon Piped Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0-or-later Language Ruby Vue Setup difficulty Hard Easy Min. RAM 2,048 MB 50 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 50,177 ★ 10,168 First released 2016 2024 Replaces Twitter, X YouTube
Why pick each one
Choose Mastodon if… Large fediverse network Strong moderation features Mastodon details Choose Piped if… Released under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly Mature project with 10.2k GitHub stars Written in Vue Piped details
Frequently asked questions Is Mastodon or Piped better? Neither is universally better. Mastodon has the larger community, while Piped is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Mastodon and Piped free and open-source? Yes. Mastodon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Piped under AGPL-3.0-or-later. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Mastodon and Piped with Docker? Mastodon: yes. Piped: check the project docs for container support.