WriteFreely
Writing software for starting a minimalist, federated blog — or an entire community.
- Blogging Platforms
- Go
- AGPL-3.0
- Actively maintained
GitHub stats
- GitHub stars
- 5,264
- Forks
- 401
- Open issues
- 77
- Commits, last 12 months
- 210
- Last commit
- Oct 1, 2026
- Latest release
- v0.17.2Aug 10, 2026
- Created
- Apr 2, 2017
Data from the GitHub API, refreshed daily.
About WriteFreely
Writing software for starting a minimalist, federated blog — or an entire community. WriteFreely is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license and written mainly in Go, so you can read the code, run it on your own hardware and keep full control of your data.
The project has 5,264 stars and 401 forks on GitHub, with 210 commits over the last year. It installs natively rather than through an official Docker image, so plan for a short manual setup.
Topics
- writing
- publishing
- blogging
- web-application
- go
- activitypub
- federation
- beta
- writefreely
- markdown
Open-source alternative to
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What is WriteFreely?
WriteFreely is a free, open-source app you can host on your own server, listed in our Blogging Platforms category. Writing software for starting a minimalist, federated blog — or an entire community. The source code lives at github.com/writefreely/writefreely, where it has 5,264 stars.
Is WriteFreely free and open source?
Yes. WriteFreely 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 WriteFreely with Docker?
WriteFreely does not list an official Docker image. It installs natively (Go), so follow the install steps in its README or look for a community-maintained container.
What are the best alternatives to WriteFreely?
Popular open-source alternatives to WriteFreely include Ghost, Ech0 and HTMLy. WriteFreely itself is a self-hosted alternative to WordPress.com, Medium and Substack.
Is WriteFreely actively maintained?
The most recent commit to WriteFreely was on Oct 1, 2026 with 210 commits in the past twelve months. The latest release is v0.17.2, published Aug 10, 2026. Check the open issues on GitHub to gauge how quickly maintainers respond.