Mastodon
FreeThe federated open-source Twitter alternative. No algorithms, no ads, no tracking. Choose your server or run your own. Over 10 million users across thousands of independent instances.
How to install Mastodon as a PWA
Frequently asked questions about Mastodon
Is Mastodon really decentralized?
Yes — Mastodon is one client implementation of the ActivityPub federation standard. There is no central Mastodon company that owns the network; each instance (mastodon.social, fosstodon.org, etc.) is operated independently and federates with the others. A user on mastodon.social can follow and be followed by a user on any other ActivityPub-compatible server, including Pixelfed (photos), PeerTube (video), and Lemmy (forums). The Mastodon nonprofit develops the reference software but does not control the network.
Is Mastodon free?
Yes — Mastodon is free and open-source under AGPL. Joining any instance is free; most instances are operated by volunteers and funded by donations (mastodon.social by the nonprofit, fosstodon.org by Patreon, etc.). Self-hosting your own instance is free but requires a 2GB+ VPS (~$10/month) and ongoing moderation effort. There are no ads, no paid tiers, and no algorithmic amplification anywhere in the protocol.
How does Mastodon compare to Twitter/X?
Mastodon has no algorithm (chronological-only timeline), no ads, no shadow-banning, no single owner, and you can move your account between servers. Twitter/X has greater reach (~500M MAU vs ~2M for Mastodon), real-time event coverage, paid checkmark verification, and the network effect of celebrities and brands. Mastodon wins for users wanting a calmer, ad-free, privacy-respecting feed; Twitter/X wins for news velocity and broadcast reach.
Can I use Mastodon offline?
The official Mastodon web client is installable as a PWA and caches the UI, but reading and posting both require network. There are good third-party clients (Tusky on Android, Ivory and Mona on iOS) that cache more aggressively. Offline drafts and queued posts work in most native clients but not yet reliably in the official web PWA. For most users, Mastodon is functionally a network-online product.
Who uses Mastodon in production?
Mastodon is used by the European Union (EU Voice has been retired but the EU still operates social.network.europa.eu), the German Federal Government (social.bund.de), Mozilla (mozilla.social), the Free Software Foundation, IETF members, and many journalists, scientists, and open-source maintainers who left Twitter/X in 2022-2023. Server admin demographics skew heavily EU, with notable instances in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.
Where Mastodon is heading (12-24 months)
- →Threads (Meta) federation via ActivityPub is the largest unknown — it could 100x the Fediverse user base or trigger a defederation split.
- →Bluesky/AT Protocol interoperability remains technically possible but politically tense.
- →Improved discovery (algorithmic-by-default-off but available, full-text search) is gradually shipping in v4.x releases.
- →Mastodon mobile apps (official iOS and Android) are improving but still trail community clients like Ivory and Tusky.
Related questions
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini usually suggest these next.
- How do I choose the right Mastodon instance to join?
- Can I move my Mastodon account between servers?
- What is the difference between Mastodon and the Fediverse?
- How do I self-host a Mastodon instance?
- Does Mastodon support full-text search across all posts?
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