Friendica review covering decentralized social networking, ActivityPub federation, privacy controls, self-hosting, pros and cons, and Fediverse alternatives.
Friendica is a free, open-source, decentralized social networking platform originally created in 2010 by Mike Macgirvin under the name Mistpark, later renamed Friendika and then Friendica. It is part of the Fediverse and is now maintained entirely by a volunteer community with no corporate or foundation backing.
Friendica's defining feature is broad protocol interoperability: it federates via its native DFRN protocol, the Diaspora protocol, ActivityPub (added December 2018, connecting it to Mastodon and other major Fediverse platforms), and legacy OStatus, plus bridges to services like email, Bluesky, and Tumblr through add-ons.
Unlike character-limited microblogging platforms, Friendica supports long-form posts with rich text and BBCode formatting, along with Facebook-style features including photo albums, an events calendar, and group/forum pages.
Fine-grained, per-post privacy controls let users restrict individual posts to specific contacts or groups, and Friendica can bridge otherwise-incompatible networks together, acting as a connective layer across the wider decentralized and even non-federated social web.
Friendica is entirely free, open-source software released under the AGPLv3 license. There are no subscription tiers; users either self-host their own instance ('pod') or join one of many independently run public instances, some of which request voluntary donations to cover hosting costs.
Yes, Friendica is free, open-source software. You can join an existing public instance for free or self-host your own instance, with some public instances requesting voluntary donations for hosting costs.
Friendica was created in 2010 by developer Mike Macgirvin under the name Mistpark, later renamed Friendika and then Friendica. Macgirvin left the project in 2012, and it has been community-maintained since.
Yes, Friendica added ActivityPub support in its December 2018 release, allowing it to federate bidirectionally with Mastodon and other ActivityPub-based Fediverse platforms.
Friendica supports long-form posts with rich text formatting and Facebook-style features like photo albums, events, and groups, whereas Mastodon is primarily a shorter, character-limited microblogging platform.
According to federation-monitoring services, Friendica had roughly 99 active instances and around 2,000 to 5,000 active users over recent months as of mid-2026, though exact figures are inherently incomplete across the decentralized Fediverse.
Friendica is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3).