Pleroma is a lightweight, self-hosted ActivityPub microblogging server and Mastodon alternative. Explore its features, hosting needs and alternatives.
Pleroma is an open-source, self-hosted microblogging server that speaks the ActivityPub protocol, meaning any Pleroma instance can follow, be followed by, and interact with users on Mastodon, Akkoma, Misskey and other Fediverse software.
Created in 2016 by a developer known by the pseudonym lain, Pleroma was built as a lighter-weight alternative to Mastodon, prioritizing low resource usage so instances can run affordably on modest hardware.
Pleroma supports the core building blocks of a federated social network: posts with a default 5,000-character limit, media attachments, polls, and full ActivityPub federation with the wider Fediverse.
Administrators get granular control through the Message Rewrite Facility, a policy engine for content moderation and federation rules, and can choose from multiple frontends while supporting both the Mastodon and GNU social client APIs for compatibility with existing apps.
Pleroma itself is entirely free and open source under the AGPLv3 license, with no paid tiers, subscriptions or vendor fees for the software.
The only real cost is server hosting, and because Pleroma is designed to be lightweight, it can run on inexpensive virtual private servers, making it one of the more affordable ways to self-host a federated social network node.
Pleroma is a free, open-source microblogging server that implements ActivityPub, letting anyone self-host a federated social network node compatible with Mastodon and the Fediverse.
Yes, Pleroma is free and open-source software under the AGPLv3 license; the only cost is the server hosting you choose to run it on.
Pleroma was created in 2016 by a pseudonymous developer known as lain, with the first backend commit made in March 2017.
Pleroma is designed to be significantly more lightweight and resource-efficient than Mastodon, making it cheaper to self-host, while Mastodon has a larger community and dedicated organizational backing.
Akkoma is a fork of Pleroma created in 2022 to support faster-paced development and more user customization.
Yes, because both implement the ActivityPub protocol, Pleroma and Mastodon users can follow, reply to and interact with each other across instances.
Yes, running a Pleroma instance requires comfort with server administration, though its lightweight requirements make it more accessible than heavier alternatives.