Open Source Threads Alternatives
A curated collection of the 3 best open source alternatives to Threads.
The best open source alternative to Threads is Mastodon. If that doesn't suit you, we've compiled a ranked list of other open source Threads alternatives to help you find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to Threads are: Hey and Bluesky.
Threads alternatives are mainly Social Networking but may also be Cryptocurrency & Blockchain. Browse these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Threads.
A federated social network server on ActivityPub, letting anyone run a community that still talks to the wider fediverse.
Every Mastodon server talks to every other one, and to anything else implementing ActivityPub, which is rather the point. People follow friends and discover new ones, publishing links, pictures, text and video from a server run by someone they chose instead of a company they did not.
The feature set is what you would expect from a timeline, plus the moderation tools an operator actually needs.
- Chronological timelines: posts from the people you follow arrive in real time, in the order they were written.
- Media attachments: images and video upload and play inline, with silent video treated as an animated GIF.
- Safety and moderation: private posts, locked accounts, phrase filtering, muting, blocking, and a reporting system.
- OAuth2 and REST API: Mastodon acts as an OAuth2 provider, and REST and streaming APIs feed a rich third-party app ecosystem.
The stack is Ruby on Rails for the API and web pages, PostgreSQL as the main database, Redis and Sidekiq for caching and queueing, Node.js for the streaming API, and React with Redux for the dynamic parts of the interface.
Running an instance needs Ruby 3.3, PostgreSQL 14, Redis 7, Node 22 and FFmpeg 5.1 or newer. The repository carries Docker and Compose configurations plus setups for Heroku and Scalingo, Helm charts live in a separate repository, and a standalone installation guide covers a from-scratch server.
Historical snapshot of Hey, a decentralized social application built on Lens Protocol, preserved as it stood before its source closed.
Hey is a decentralized and permissionless social media application built on the Lens Protocol, where people create profiles, publish content and interact on a blockchain-backed network instead of a company-owned one.
This repository is explicitly a historical snapshot. It holds the last publicly available open source version of the code as it existed before May 15, 2026, and development after that date is not open source. The production site may since have gained features, architectural changes, infrastructure changes and security work that are absent here, so nothing in the repository should be read as the current implementation.
What is preserved is a monorepo on a mainstream web and Web3 stack.
- Frontend: TypeScript, React and Next.js, styled with Tailwind CSS.
- Data layer: GraphQL against the Lens Protocol, with PostgreSQL behind it.
- Chain clients: Wagmi and Viem handle wallet connection and contract interaction.
- Tooling: pnpm and Node.js drive the monorepo and the supporting development scripts.
Running it locally calls for Node.js version 22 or later, pnpm, PostgreSQL and Git, with nvm suggested for managing Node versions. Clone the repository, install dependencies from the root and work from there. Treat the result as reference material or a base for a fork rather than as a maintained application you can follow upstream.
The Bluesky social app, a React Native client for the decentralized AT Protocol network, running on web, iOS and Android.
This repository holds the Bluesky Social app, the client people use on the web, on iOS and on Android. What separates it from a conventional social product is the layer underneath: the data lives on a public protocol, so no single company owns the graph or the feeds built on it.
The app is written in TypeScript with React Native and builds on the atproto TypeScript packages, which are open source in a separate repository. A small amount of Go serves the React Native Web build. The schemas and APIs it relies on sit in the app.bsky lexicon namespace of the AT Protocol.
A few things are worth knowing before cloning it.
- Protocol first: the Authenticated Transfer Protocol is decentralized by design, and custom feeds, federated services and alternative clients are expected rather than tolerated.
- Contribution policy: the team prioritizes high quality issues and pull requests and may close others quickly.
- Forking is blessed: forks must change branding, support links and analytics so users are never confused about who they are talking to.
- Assets are carved out: illustrations, icons, fonts and brand assets are licensed separately and are not covered by the code license.
- Security reports: vulnerabilities go to a dedicated address that reaches the entire team at once.
Build instructions live in the repository docs, with the AT Protocol guides worth reading alongside them. The code is MIT licensed and the company has pledged software patent non-aggression, making this a sound starting point for anyone building a client of their own.
