Mastodon
Decentralized Application
Community
Details
License Libre (AGPLv3); https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
Dev Status 🟢 Active
Dev Status Detail Released (v4.5 released November 2025; active development; 10M+ registered users; ~1M monthly active users)
Owner Mastodon gGmbH (German nonprofit, founded by Eugen Rochko); transitioning to new nonprofit foundation structure with board governance including Biz Stone, Karien Bezuidenhout, Esra'a Al Shafei; Felix Hlatky as Executive Director as of November 2025
Owner - List
- Mastodon gGmbH
Governing Body Mastodon gGmbH (German non-profit) | New non-profit foundation with board governance (transition in progress as of 2025)
Governing Body - List
- Mastodon gGmbH
Country Germany (Berlin)
Start Year 2016
Stack Ruby on Rails + Node.js (backend); React.js + Redux (web frontend)
Funding Personal investment + Donations + Paid services (Patreon originally; donations; Jeff Atwood family €2.2M; Biz Stone; AltStore €260K; Craig Newmark; NLnet grants; paid hosting/support revenue model launched September 2025)
Last Investigated Jul 1, 2026
Decentralized Application Attributes
Owner - List
- Mastodon gGmbH
Origins Social Network (created by Eugen Rochko as a decentralized, user-controlled alternative to Twitter; motivated by dissatisfaction with centralized commercial social media)
Database PostgreSQL (primary data store); Redis (job processing and caching)
Query Language N/A (no user-facing query language; REST and Streaming APIs for developers)
Data Formats ActivityStreams 2.0 / ActivityPub (JSON-LD); JSON (REST API responses); HTML (rendered posts)
Collaborative Live Editing N/A (asynchronous microblogging; no collaborative editing)
Rich Text Editing Basic text only (posts support formatting via HTML subset; no rich collaborative editing)
Mobile Support Mobile support (official iOS and Android apps; many third-party clients)
Web Support Yes (full web interface at mastodon.social and any instance)
Native Apps Native apps (official iOS and Android; many third-party native clients including Ivory, Tusky, Metatext)
Terms Free SaaS (hosted instances free to join; self-hosting free; Mastodon gGmbH now offers paid managed hosting and support services for organizations)
Funds €2.2M+ from Atwood family; €260K from AltStore; €65K from Global Chinese Community of Universal Digital Commons; €1M one-time payment to Rochko on departure; additional undisclosed donations
Based On ActivityPub (Fed Pro — Mastodon implements ActivityPub as its federation protocol)
Governing Body - List
- Mastodon gGmbH
Use Case Category Social Network / Media Publishing
User Interface Type Timeline/Feed (chronological home timeline; local and federated timelines; profile pages; notification panel; media gallery)
Offline Capabilities Partial offline (read-only browsing possible offline in some clients; posting requires connection)
Collaboration Features Moderation tools (instance-level and user-level blocking/muting/filtering; content warnings; quote posts with consent controls introduced v4.5); real-time notifications; mentions and replies
Data Portability Full export (account data export including posts, follows, lists, bookmarks in ActivityPub-compatible format; account migration to other instances via Move Account feature preserving followers)
Integration Ecosystem Fediverse (interoperates with all ActivityPub-compatible software: Pixelfed, PeerTube, Misskey, Lemmy, Threads, WordPress, Ghost, Drupal); third-party client ecosystem (Ivory, Tusky, and many others); REST and Streaming APIs; well-documented developer API
Web2 Data Export No (no import from Twitter/X or other centralized platforms; account migration within fediverse only)
Prosocial Coherence High (community-driven moderation; instance-level governance; no algorithmic feed by default; chronological timeline; content warnings as norm; Mastodon Server Covenant for instance operators; no advertising; nonprofit ownership; quote posts designed with consent controls)
Economic Flows None (no cryptocurrency, micropayments, or economic flow features; revenue model is donations and hosted services for organizations)
Governance & Decision Making Foundation-governed (transitioning to nonprofit foundation with board of directors; community governance being implemented 2025; instance operators independently govern their own communities; Mastodon Server Covenant sets baseline standards)
Media / Publishing Yes (images, video, audio attachments; media galleries; alt text for accessibility)
Knowledge Management No
Sensemaking No
Project Management No
Communication Model Asynchronous (Twitter/microblog-style store-and-forward; posts delivered via ActivityPub to followers across instances; real-time timeline updates via streaming API)
Network Resilience High (federated architecture: no single point of failure; instances operate independently; network continues if individual instances go offline; instance operators responsible for their own uptime)
Discovery Mechanism Instance directory (joinmastodon.org instance picker); social graph (follow recommendations; federated timeline discovery); hashtag search across fediverse; new users defaulted to mastodon.social
Max Participants Broadcast (1,000+; individual posts can reach entire fediverse; no architectural participant limit per post)
Data Sovereignty Moderate (data stored on chosen instance server, not locally; account migration preserves followers but posts not automatically migrated; instance operator has access to user data; self-hosting gives full control)
Relationships
How this tool connects to other tools and organizations, from relationships reviewed by the OpenHaven data steward. They describe how projects connect, not how good they are.
- Built on
- Developed by
- Mastodon gGmbH
- Speaks protocol
- Stewarded by
- Mastodon gGmbH
- Interoperates with
- Storage for