NodeBB vs PixelFed

Both are self-hosted communication - social networks and forums projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

NodeBB scores 94 against PixelFed's 88, putting it slightly ahead. That measures project health, not feature fit — PixelFed may still be the right choice if it does what you need.

	NodeBB	PixelFed
Health score	94/100	88/100
Commits (11 mo)	3152	1210
Commits (last 3 mo)	1274	672
Stars	15k	7.1k
Latest release	16 Sept 2026	22 Sept 2026
Licence	GPL-3.0	AGPL-3.0
Built with	Nodejs, Docker	PHP
Typical RAM	1 GB	1 GB

NodeBB

Forum software built for the modern web.

94/100

Thriving

High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.

Maintenance 38/40

Releases 25/25

Community 17/20

Momentum 15/15

Commit activity more than 94% of tracked projects; popularity more than 84%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

PixelFed

Ethical photo sharing platform, powered by ActivityPub federation (alternative to Instagram).

88/100

Thriving

High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.

Maintenance 33/40

Releases 25/25

Community 15/20

Momentum 15/15

Commit activity more than 82% of tracked projects; popularity more than 73%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted communication - social networks and forums.