Pixelfed
Pixelfed is a federated, open-source photo sharing platform built on ActivityPub, written in Laravel for communities that run their own servers.
- GitHub stars
- 7.1k
- Last commit
- today
- Latest release
- v0.14.4
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
- Self-hosted
- Yes
Pixelfed is photo sharing software that takes part in the fediverse. It lets people share casual shots and creative photography with an audience without algorithmic barriers, and because it speaks ActivityPub it can interact with other federated platforms.
Pixelfed is built with PHP and Laravel. The README lists officially supported databases as MySQL 9 or newer and MariaDB 11 or newer, with PostgreSQL 14 or newer supported on a best-effort basis but not recommended. As of September 2026 the maintainers recommend running instances with Docker Compose, while non-Docker installs remain supported. A YunoHost package exists, and some unofficial cloud providers offer hosting.
The project is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and publishes documentation on its own site, with Matrix for chat. It has a firm policy against contributions that are substantially generated by generative AI, including code, documentation, translations and issues.
Key features
- Federated photo sharing via ActivityPub
- Fediverse interoperability
- Laravel-based application
- Docker Compose deployment
- MySQL and MariaDB support
- YunoHost package
Pricing: Free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence.
