What is Lemmy used for?

Lemmy is a federated, self-hostable link aggregator and forum for the fediverse, comparable to Reddit, where communities on different servers can interact. It is a good fit for running a community forum on your own server, hosting a topic-focused link aggregator and moving communities away from Reddit.

Is Lemmy open source?

Yes. Lemmy is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at LemmyNet/lemmy and is written mainly in Rust.

Yes. Lemmy is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Lemmy?

Yes. Lemmy can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Lemmy an alternative to?

Lemmy is an open-source alternative to Reddit. Other open-source alternatives to Reddit include Mbin, Discourse and NodeBB.

Is Lemmy actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Lemmy was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is 0.19.20, published on 21 July 2026. The project has 15k stars on GitHub.

Lemmy: open-source alternative to Reddit

About Lemmy

Lemmy is an open-source link aggregator and discussion forum that belongs to the fediverse. Users subscribe to communities, post links and text, vote and comment, much as they would on Reddit, Lobste.rs or Hacker News, but the software is decentralized and anyone can run a server.

Servers federate with each other in a way comparable to email, so someone registered on one instance can subscribe to communities and join conversations on others. Each server sets its own moderation policy, with site-wide admins and community moderators. Features include live-updating comment threads, vote scores, themes, avatars, a mobile-friendly interface and sign-up that needs only a username and password.

As an open-source alternative to Reddit and other link aggregators, Lemmy puts control in the hands of whoever runs the server rather than a single company. The backend is written in Rust using Actix and Diesel, with a TypeScript front end, and it is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Deployment is supported through Docker and Ansible.

Key features

Federated communities via ActivityPub
Subscribe, post, vote and comment
Live-updating comment threads
Per-server moderation policies
Site admins and community moderators
Mobile-friendly interface with themes
Docker and Ansible deployment

Good fit for

→Running a community forum on your own server
→Hosting a topic-focused link aggregator
→Moving communities away from Reddit

Built with: Rust
Tags: forum; link-aggregator; fediverse; activitypub; federated; self-hosted; community; rust; reddit-alternative

Lemmy: questions and answers

What is Lemmy used for?: Lemmy is a federated, self-hostable link aggregator and forum for the fediverse, comparable to Reddit, where communities on different servers can interact. It is a good fit for running a community forum on your own server, hosting a topic-focused link aggregator and moving communities away from Reddit.
Is Lemmy open source?: Yes. Lemmy is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at LemmyNet/lemmy and is written mainly in Rust.
Is Lemmy free?: Yes. Lemmy is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Lemmy?: Yes. Lemmy can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Lemmy an alternative to?: Lemmy is an open-source alternative to Reddit. Other open-source alternatives to Reddit include Mbin, Discourse and NodeBB.
Is Lemmy actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Lemmy was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is 0.19.20, published on 21 July 2026. The project has 15k stars on GitHub.