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Smithereen vs Streams: catalog facts
Smithereen	Streams
Free Free and released into the public domain under the Unlicense.	Free Free to download and run on your own server.
Self-hosted	Web, Self-hosted
Friends, walls and groups instead of a microblog feed Federates with other ActivityPub servers	Nomadic identity not tied to one server Fine-grained permissions on content
You need to run and maintain your own server Smaller community than Mastodon or other major fediverse servers	Requires running and maintaining a PHP web server Documentation lives mainly inside the repository
Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: Unlicense	License not stated
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 23, 2026

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