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Mastodon

Berlin non-profit behind the federated network where nobody owns the whole graph.

Open sourceSelf-hostableNon-profit
joinmastodon.org
Price
Not checked
No verified figure yet — corrections welcome.
Based in
Germany
Category
Social & Publishing
Networks that federate instead of enclosing.
Source & hosting
Open source · Self-hostable

Business overview

Mastodon is free, open-source microblogging software that anyone can run as a server. Each installation is an independent instance with its own rules and moderation, and instances interoperate over ActivityPub, so one account can follow and be followed by people on any other instance or on other software implementing the same protocol. Posts arrive in chronological order, with no advertising and no algorithmic reordering.

Posting supports audio, video and images, accessibility descriptions, polls, content warnings, animated avatars, custom emojis and thumbnail crop control. The project also operates two servers of its own, mastodon.social and mastodon.online. Releases ship continuously: version 4.6 added curated collections of profiles, reworked profiles and institutional features, and version 4.7 in August 2026 concentrated on bug fixes, performance and interoperability with other fediverse platforms. Development happens in the open, with monthly engineering write-ups and accepted community contributions.

Mastodon began in 2016 as an open-source project by Eugen Rochko and launched publicly that October; he is now executive strategy and product advisor, with Felix Hlatky as executive director. The organisation was incorporated in 2021 as a German gGmbH and later lost non-profit status when Germany removed software projects from eligibility, so in 2025 it started moving to a new foundation and introduced community governance. A US 501(c)(3), Mastodon, Inc., channels tax-deductible donations, while Mastodon GmbH in Berlin runs the two servers.

Value proposition

Anyone can run the server, so a community sets its own rules and keeps its posts on infrastructure it controls, while still reaching people on every other instance over ActivityPub rather than inside one company's platform.

Audience

Nobody has claimed this listing yet — it is maintained by the directory. Claim it if you work on it.

Screenshots & video

Mastodon home page — “Social networking that's not for sale”, with the federated server illustration
Mastodon home page — “Social networking that's not for sale”, with the federated server illustration

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  • Moderation tools
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