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Bonfire vs Smithereen: catalog facts
Bonfire	Smithereen
Free Self-hosting is free; cooperative hosting is also offered.	Free Free and released into the public domain under the Unlicense.
Web, Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Federated with the open social web Modular building blocks for different community needs	Friends, walls and groups instead of a microblog feed Federates with other ActivityPub servers
Self-hosting needs some sysadmin experience Smaller ecosystem than Mastodon	You need to run and maintain your own server Smaller community than Mastodon or other major fediverse servers
Self-hosted, Hosted service	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: Unlicense
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 24, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.