Streams
A self-hosted decentralised social server with nomadic identity and fine-grained permissions over who sees what.
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About Streams
Streams is a decentralised personal communication system that you run on your own server. It is written mainly in PHP and focuses on nomadic identity, where an account is not tied to a single server, and on fine-grained permissions that control who can see and interact with each piece of content.
The project is developed in the open on Codeberg, with a long commit history and dated releases, the most recent from 2026. Setup files for DDEV and Lando are included for local development.
Strengths
- Nomadic identity not tied to one server
- Fine-grained permissions on content
- Actively maintained with regular releases
Limitations
- Requires running and maintaining a PHP web server
- Documentation lives mainly inside the repository
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree to download and run on your own server.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- Mike Macgirvin
- Platforms
- Web, Self-hosted
- How it runs
- Self-hosted
- Best suited for
- Self-hosters who want a private, permission-focused decentralised social server
- Categories
- Social networks
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Streams
Compare allSoftware that can replace Streams for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Hubzilla
An open-source, self-hosted fediverse platform for social networking, publishing and collaboration with nomadic identity.
Hubzilla shares nomadic identity and fine access control, and adds built-in files, calendars, webpages, wikis and forums, making it more complex to run.
Friendica
Federated social platform that bridges to Mastodon, diaspora*, email and RSS.
Friendica is an AGPL-3.0 PHP platform bridging Mastodon, diaspora*, email and RSS with groups and events, but has a dated, dense interface.
diaspora*
Decentralised social network built on independently run pods.
diaspora* uses aspects for fine control over who sees each post, but does not speak ActivityPub and has low activity.
Bonfire
An open-source, federated platform for building a community space that connects to the open social web.
Bonfire is a modular federated community platform with self-hosted or cooperative hosting options, without nomadic identity.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
