PixelFed
Ethical photo sharing platform, powered by ActivityPub federation (alternative to Instagram).
- Social & Forums
- PHP
- AGPL-3.0
- Actively maintained
GitHub stats
- GitHub stars
- 7,119
- Forks
- 884
- Open issues
- 90
- Commits, last 12 months
- 3,651
- Last commit
- Oct 5, 2026
- Latest release
- v0.14.4Sep 30, 2026
- Created
- Apr 17, 2018
Data from the GitHub API, refreshed daily.
About PixelFed
Ethical photo sharing platform, powered by ActivityPub federation (alternative to Instagram). PixelFed is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license and written mainly in PHP, so you can read the code, run it on your own hardware and keep full control of your data.
The project has 7,119 stars and 884 forks on GitHub, with 3,651 commits over the last year. It installs natively rather than through an official Docker image, so plan for a short manual setup.
Topics
- laravel
- activitypub
- federation
- pixelfed
- social-network
- fediverse
Open-source alternative to
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What is PixelFed?
PixelFed is a free, open-source app you can host on your own server, listed in our Social & Forums category. Ethical photo sharing platform, powered by ActivityPub federation (alternative to Instagram). The source code lives at github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed, where it has 7,119 stars.
Is PixelFed free and open source?
Yes. PixelFed is open-source software released under the AGPL-3.0 license, so you can self-host it at no cost. You only pay for the server it runs on, and some projects also offer an optional paid cloud plan.
Can I run PixelFed with Docker?
PixelFed does not list an official Docker image. It installs natively (PHP), so follow the install steps in its README or look for a community-maintained container.
What are the best alternatives to PixelFed?
Popular open-source alternatives to PixelFed include Mastodon, Discourse and Flarum. PixelFed itself is a self-hosted alternative to Twitter / X.
Is PixelFed actively maintained?
The most recent commit to PixelFed was on Oct 5, 2026 with 3,651 commits in the past twelve months. The latest release is v0.14.4, published Sep 30, 2026. Check the open issues on GitHub to gauge how quickly maintainers respond.