Pinnwand vs paste
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted pastebins & snippets options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Pinnwand | paste |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 73 · Good | 14 · At risk |
| Category | Pastebins & Snippets | Pastebins & Snippets |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Language | Python | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 228 | ★ 574 |
| First released | 2018 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Pastebin.com | Pastebin.com, GitHub Gist |
What are Pinnwand and paste?
Pinnwand
Pinnwand is a straightforward pastebin written in Python that supports multi-file pastes and expiration. It pairs with the steck command-line tool for posting pastes directly from the terminal.
- Multi-file pastes
- Command-line client
- Expiration support
- Simple deployment
paste
paste is a minimalist, self-hosted pastebin service written in Go that stores text snippets and returns short URLs. It is designed to be tiny, dependency-free, and easy to run from a single binary.
- Single static binary
- Filesystem-based storage
- Short URL generation
- Simple HTTP API
Pinnwand vs paste: key differences
Pinnwand is written in Python, while paste is built with JavaScript. Licensing differs — BSD-3-Clause for Pinnwand versus MIT for paste. Paste is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Pinnwand. Paste has the considerably larger community, at 574 GitHub stars versus 228.
Why pick each one
Choose Pinnwand if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Python
Choose paste if…
- Extremely lightweight
- Trivial to deploy
Watch out for
- Very minimal feature set
- No syntax highlighting UI
Frequently asked questions
Is Pinnwand or paste better?
Neither is universally better. paste has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Pinnwand and paste free and open-source?
Yes. Pinnwand is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and paste under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Pinnwand and paste with Docker?
Pinnwand: yes. paste: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Pinnwand or paste?
paste has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Pinnwand. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.