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Smithereen vs Mastodon: catalog facts
Smithereen	Mastodon
Free Free and released into the public domain under the Unlicense.	Free Free and open source under the AGPL. Hosting is separate.
Self-hosted	Android, Web, Self-hosted
Friends, walls and groups instead of a microblog feed Federates with other ActivityPub servers	Chronological timelines with no engagement ranking Federated, so moving servers does not mean losing your network
You need to run and maintain your own server Smaller community than Mastodon or other major fediverse servers	Your experience depends heavily on which server you join Running a server has real moderation and maintenance cost
Self-hosted	Self-hosted, Web application
Open source	Open source
License: Unlicense	License: AGPL-3.0
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 24, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026

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