Thought it would be interesting to see the growth of the fediverse.
Monthly Active Users:
| Software | Current | Yesterday | Last week | Last Month | 3 Months Ago | 6 Months Ago | 1 Year Ago |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piefed | 2791 | 2547 | 2057 | 1987 | 1608 | 1619 | 155 |
| Lemmy | 36320 | 36213 | 35487 | 35232 | 36482 | 40903 | 42973 |
| Mbin | 770 | 769 | 746 | 701 | 725 | 916 | 719 |
| Threadiverse | 39881 | 39529 | 38290 | 37920 | 38815 | 43438 | 43847 |
| Mastodon | 743028 | 742320 | 732938 | 691835 | 676002 | 729320 | 821566 |
| Pixelfed | 118480 | 120952 | 116430 | 91956 | 90879 | 125028 | 99003 |
| Peertube | 29094 | 28913 | 28338 | 27772 | 21900 | 23805 | 34735 |
| Loops | 5578 | 5039 | 3021 | 2271 | 493 | 26652 | 16227 |
| Bookwyrm | 3761 | 3811 | 3744 | 3080 | 2977 | 2985 | 4995 |
| Friendica | 1482 | 1470 | 1442 | 1313 | 1501 | 1756 | 2547 |
| Total | 981185 | 981563 | 962493 | 894067 | 871382 | 996422 | 1066767 |
Difference:
| Software | -1 Day | -1 Week | -1 Month | -3 Month | -6 Month | -1 Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piefed | 244 | 734 | 804 | 1183 | 1172 | 2636 |
| Lemmy | 107 | 833 | 1088 | -162 | -4583 | -6653 |
| Mbin | 1 | 24 | 69 | 45 | -146 | 51 |
| Threadiverse | 352 | 1591 | 1961 | 1066 | -3557 | -3966 |
| Mastodon | 708 | 10090 | 51193 | 67026 | 13708 | -78538 |
| Pixelfed | -2472 | 2050 | 26524 | 27601 | -6548 | 19477 |
| Peertube | 181 | 756 | 1322 | 7194 | 5289 | -5641 |
| Loops | 539 | 2557 | 3307 | 5085 | -21074 | -10649 |
| Bookwyrm | -50 | 17 | 681 | 784 | 776 | -1234 |
| Friendica | 12 | 40 | 169 | -19 | -274 | -1065 |
| Total | -378 | 18692 | 87118 | 109803 | -15237 | -85582 |
Change (%):
| Software | -1 Day | -1 Week | -1 Month | -3 Month | -6 Month | -1 Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piefed | 9.6% | 35.7% | 40.5% | 73.6% | 72.4% | 1700.6% |
| Lemmy | 0.3% | 2.3% | 3.1% | -0.4% | -11.2% | -15.5% |
| Mbin | 0.1% | 3.2% | 9.8% | 6.2% | -15.9% | 7.1% |
| Threadiverse | 0.9% | 4.2% | 5.2% | 2.7% | -8.2% | -9.0% |
| Mastodon | 0.1% | 1.4% | 7.4% | 9.9% | 1.9% | -9.6% |
| Pixelfed | -2.0% | 1.8% | 28.8% | 30.4% | -5.2% | 19.7% |
| Peertube | 0.6% | 2.7% | 4.8% | 32.8% | 22.2% | -16.2% |
| Loops | 10.7% | 84.6% | 145.6% | 1031.4% | -79.1% | -65.6% |
| Bookwyrm | -1.3% | 0.5% | 22.1% | 26.3% | 26.0% | -24.7% |
| Friendica | 0.8% | 2.8% | 12.9% | -1.3% | -15.6% | -41.8% |
| Total | 0.0% | 1.9% | 9.7% | 12.6% | -1.5% | -8.0% |
-
Note: Threadiverse is Piefed, Lemmy, and Mbin. Fediverse only accounts for listed software [10] I’m curious about, not the other [119] software tracked by the website.
-
Source: Fediverse-Observer
-
Caveats: Only using 1 source, using two different sets of data within the same source (why 6 month and 1 year data seems off compared to the others, I didn’t dig through the code to figure out why that would be).
I may try to make an automated version of this, but I already bounced off the API today (never tried to code to interact with an API before).
Mods: Feel free to delete if its not appropriate in the community.
Edit: Added Difference table & Threadiverse and Fediverse rows after requested. Added Note about Threadiverse and Fediverse. Added clarity it is ‘Monthly Active Users’, not ‘Users’. Spelling.
Might be useful to clarify that the numbers are monthly active users.
Thanks for catching that (edited post). Got sidetracked in the middle of making the post and forgot some pieces. Luckily people have been helpfully pointing them out, plus adding additional pieces.
Thats some good numbers!
That’s a lot of numbers. Maybe a bit too much for me, so I went to the fediverse observer to see the data in graphical form.
Looks like all lines are going up at the moment, and some started in 2025-12. Did that many people make a new year’s resolution to ditch Big Social?
Haha. Yeah, its a bit much. The graphical view on fediverse-observer is quite nice. Not sure why the numbers don’t match between the daily and monthly views though (perhaps something to investigate in the future).
I think its a combination of holidays and then political stuff that caused some migration from the reddit BuyEU and BuyCanadian subs to the fediverse.
My understanding is that Piefed is getting a much better reception with redditors than Lemmy, and that’s why the significantly greater percent growth compared to the larger Lemmy community.
Just made a new account on piefed, and I really can’t wait to get started. Once it gets approved, I’m definitely going to be spending more time there.
In order to balance the flow of popular communities and more quiet ones, you really need “multireddits”. Since Lemmy doesn’t have that feature, I’ve made multiple accounts to manage things, which definitely contributes to the perceived MAU. If Piefed helps with that, I guess I’ll just abandon some of my Lemmy accounts in response. Now that more and more people are becoming aware of Piefed, I expect that Lemmy numbers might take a hit at some point.
Anyway, I would really like to see how different platforms have evolved over time. For example, is Piefed growing more or faster than Lemmy. Visualizations really help with that.
Welcome :)
I think multireddits (feeds?) are already implemented on the web, but the apps (I’m on Voyager) are quite far behind on implementing Piefed features (equivalent Lemmy features work, but not Piefed specific features like Events or Stack Overflow Q&A style posts).
Lemmy numbers look to have been taking a hit for like a year now (down ~15% in the last year). Though I think they’ll have a nice boost when version 1.0 releases sometime this year (potentially within the next couple months).
If you want to see some pretty nice looking graphs, the fediverse-observer website linked in the post has some good ones for daily stats and monthly stats (active users) for each of the fediverse softwares.
Yeah, the fediverse-observer has plenty graphs. It just took me a while to end up in the software specific graphs. I started with “stats” (at the top) instead of the software list which also has a graph for each. Stats gives you a broad overview of everything, whereas the software list gives the details I was looking for.
Lemmy appears to be declining, stabilizing or something. Meanwhile, Piefed is about an order of magnitude smaller, but growing.
Ah, sorry about that. I should have given better directions to the software graphs (originally took me a while to find them too).
Yeah, Lemmy fluctuates quite a bit from Reddit exodus waves to slow declines until the next wave. It would be nice if it was able to stabilize better between redditor migrations, but all the fediverse softwares seem to have similar wave patterns from what I’ve seen (migration wave -> decline). I think as the fediverse gets bigger and better integrated it’ll get ‘stickier’ and stabilize better between waves.
No worries. It’s ok.
When clicking that link, I was just greeted with a list of numbers, so my eyes started wandering elsewhere. That’s why I ended up looking at the stats, and totally missed the obvious graph buttons in the software list. My bad…
About those fluctuations: I think some people will try a little bit of instance hopping before settling on just one place. Let’s say you start with the biggest one, then realize you want something else, end up using a slow instance, and finally discover the right one. If enough many people do this, it’s going to cause some visible oscillations in the data.
That’s a good point. I’d be curious to see the average user’s journey (# of usernames and instances) before they settle. Maybe someday someone will research and write an article about that.
Why do you think this is?
Is it the signup process, word of mouth, less of a learning curve etc?
I am a lemm.ee refugee but came to piefed, mostly because the lemmy felt almost too diverse. The instances were quite wide and by picking one over the others I felt an aligned. Piefed felt more general in nature and the text/image functions a tad more ahead.
I think it’s probably a few things working together.
- Piefed is relatively ‘new’ and new things are exciting.
- Additionally, I suspect a lot of the Redditor resistance to Lemmy is due to the Lemmy developers being described as ‘tankies’ (I won’t go into it, but there are posts listing evidence, if you care to learn more about the controversy).
- Redditors being disincentivized to go to Lemmy can still benefit from Lemmy’s established network because Piefed is connected to it through the fediverse (new thing that has a larger established network).
- I think you hit on a good point too, regarding your mentioning of Lemmy’s diverse instances. There’s active friction between different instances (ex. .world and .ml; Liberals vs. Communists).
- I also think the Piefed devs deserve credit. They are developing the software quickly and are very responsive to bugs (I reported one and it was patched the next day). By contrast, I recall the Lemmy devs say version 1.0 would be out last October (?) and it still doesn’t have an expected launch date (to my knowledge).
- The Piefed devs stay pretty apolitical, which helps prevent controversy.
There may be more, but that’s all that’s coming to me at the moment.
It’s a good summary and explains some of what I didn’t understand to be going on in the background.
Did that many people make a new year’s resolution to ditch Big Social?
From what i gather:
-
Reddit has been going crazy on bans since last summer,
-
Twitter is DISGUSTING now (Grok Porn and dumb racist humour)
-
Some people are dissappointed in BlueSky - one reason being because ICE was added as a verified account. Personally i wouldn’t take that as a sign of endorsement for ICE or anything.
I was suprised to see pixelfed have such high numbers, because i checked it out and it seemed small - so I’m definitely about to have a better look at it. That probably indicates instagram did something to turn peolle away.
Im newish to pixelfed. I joined last year and couldn’t gel with it. Tried again recently and made an effort to join a subscribe to a few hashtags.
I don’t mind it. I miss some parts of insta such as recipe inspiration and small craft/garden reels. Pixelfed feels a bit too flat for me. I can see it’s like the old old insta. I like photography but the same thing (different subject, generally same style) over and over gets boring quick. Haven’t tried loops yet. Never liked pure reels style platforms. A mixture is more my thing. But bonus. Less time on my phone.
I’m actually finding Piefed not addictive but comforting. It is actually social. Not show off, not pushy, but social. I think the ability to block and tailor really does help me see enough but not too much.
I think I spend more time here than I did on Reddit. But TBF Reddit was scrolls and scrolls of drama and bullsheet. I think my visits there were based on a viewing habit.
Here I feel like part of a social community, by choice not habit.
A mixture is more my thing. But bonus: Less time on my phone.
I was just thinking this morning, I’ve massively enjoyed my time on lemmy&piefed largely because it’s so much less time consuming than reddit, twitter and insta. One day the threadiverse might have as many comms as reddit has major subreddits, but even then I expect it will be less time consuming than Reddit was Lemmy’s design just helps you have restraint.
As far as I know, Mastodon was specifically designed to be less addictive than xitter. Maybe Pixelfed was designed that way as well.
I was suprised to see pixelfed have such high numbers,
there was a big growth spurt a while ago, organized on (I think?) tik tok. see the comments below for more info
-
Very interesting to see the stats like this.
Found a small typo in Friendica: “Frendica”
Thanks for the catch (post fixed).
Thank you for the nice post
Thank you for this! I am surprised Piefed is not larger with the recent growth spurts.
One other data source:
The recent growth is indeed, very recent. It hasn’t quite finished yet.
Thanks for the link.
If I decide to make this a weekly or monthly thing I think I’ll try to incorporate another source.
would be good to total up the Threadiverse numbers (Lemmy+PieFed+Mbin)
will be extra interesting to see these numbers in a couple days, especially when today (Feb 1st) is finished and added into the stats
Added the Threadiverse totals.
Agreed. I’m curious to see how big this new wave is going to be.
Would be good to have the difference in numbers too, and the sum of everything by time frame, to better compare.
Yeah, definitely (edited post with the additions).
