Open Source Social Networking Software
Social Networking software provides platforms for hosting decentralized communities and aggregating content feeds. These tools enable users to share posts and media across federated servers using protocols like ActivityPub. This type of software is for individuals and organizations that want to manage their own social interactions and news streams. By self-hosting these apps, you avoid reliance on centralized corporate platforms for your social graphs and activity logs. These tools ensure that your community discussions and feed subscriptions remain under your own administration.
This page lists 32 open source tools in the Social Networking category. The most popular are Mastodon, RSSHub and Glance. Most use the AGPL-3.0 or MIT license, and 27 offer an official Docker image.
Mastodon
Host a federated social network where users share posts, media, and interact across ActivityPub servers.
RSSHub
Generate RSS feeds from various websites and social media platforms that do not provide them natively.
Glance
A self-hosted dashboard that aggregates RSS feeds, social media posts, and system monitoring into one interface.
Bluesky
A decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol to provide user control over data and experience.
FreshRSS
A self-hosted news aggregator for managing and reading RSS and Atom feeds in one place.
Lemmy
A decentralized link aggregator and forum that connects independent communities through the ActivityPub protocol and fediverse.
diaspora*
A privacy-aware distributed social network that allows users to own their data across federated servers.
Misskey
A federated social media platform for microblogging that supports decentralized communication across different server instances.
Fluent Reader
A desktop application for aggregating and reading RSS feeds with support for external synchronization services.
Miniflux
A minimalist and opinionated feed reader that focuses on speed, privacy, and a distraction-free reading experience.
RSS-Bridge
Generates web feeds for websites that do not provide their own RSS or Atom feeds.
NewsBlur
A personal news reader and social network that uses training to filter and highlight RSS feeds.
Pixelfed
A decentralized photo sharing platform featuring chronological feeds and ActivityPub federation for sharing images across the fediverse.
Synapse
A homeserver implementation for the Matrix open standard for secure and interoperable real-time communications.
Stringer
A self-hosted RSS reader focused on privacy and simplicity without social recommendations or tracking algorithms.
yarr
A web-based feed aggregator available as a desktop application or a self-hosted personal server.
CommaFeed
A self-hosted RSS reader that provides a centralized way to manage and read web feeds.
Redlib
A private front-end for browsing Reddit without ads, tracking, or the requirement of JavaScript.
BookWyrm
A federated social reading platform for tracking books, writing reviews, and discovering recommendations through decentralized communities.
Quiet
A peer-to-peer team chat that syncs messages directly between devices over Tor without central servers.
selfoss
A self-hosted feed aggregation web application for following updates from websites and social networks in one place.
Peergos
A peer to peer encrypted filesystem for secure file storage, sharing, and decentralized collaboration.
Fusion
A lightweight, self-hosted RSS reader with Fever API compatibility and a distraction-free reading workflow.
Movim
A federated blogging and chat platform that serves as a web frontend for the XMPP protocol.
RetroShare
A decentralized communication toolkit providing secure file sharing, chat, forums, and messaging without central servers.
Friendica
A decentralized social communication platform that connects users to the federated network known as the Fediverse.
Cypht
A webmail aggregator that combines multiple email accounts and news feeds into a single unified view.
Databag
A federated, self-hosted messenger featuring end-to-end encryption and topic-based threads for secure, decentralized communication.
Freenet
A peer to peer platform for censorship resistant communication and publishing via a decentralized encrypted datastore.
Idno
A social publishing platform for creating blogs and connecting with others via decentralized web protocols.
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