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Takeaways:

• All-Time MAU Peak (in last 7 Days): Peertube
  
• Funkwhale 2.0 doesn’t appear to be having a significant impact boosting their MAU
  
• Loops continues to decline (4.8k MAU), now less than 2x their pre-January boost numbers (2.6k MAU)
  
• Middling negative week for the threadiverse
  
• Middling positive week overall for the Fediverse (bolstered by Mastodon and Peertube)
  

Monthly Active Users^[1]^:
| Software | Current | Yesterday[1D] | Last Week[7D] | Last Month[30D] | 3 Months Ago[90D] | 6 Months Ago[180D] | 1 Year Ago[365D] | All-Time Maximum |
| :——– | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: |
| Piefed | 5285 | 5284 | 5796 | 5931 | 1937 | 1791 | 352 | 6179 |
| Lemmy | 36803 | 36817 | 37098 | 39104 | 34989 | 37490 | 54994 | 72618 |
| Mbin | 740 | 740 | 756 | 823 | 704 | 819 | 879 | 3967 |
| Threadiverse | 42828 | 42841 | 43650 | 45858 | 37630 | 40100 | 56225 | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| Mastodon | 761307 | 723429 | 757827 | 791555 | 684378 | 697388 | 875239 | 2737163 |
| Pixelfed | 106671 | 106552 | 106764 | 114921 | 69962 | 114027 | 139474 | 338813 |
| Peertube | 45477 | 45513 | 43799 | 41296 | 27589 | 24608 | 35279 | 45513 |
| Loops | 4769 | 4854 | 5701 | 8658 | 2206 | 26575 | 0 | 29821 |
| Bookwyrm | 1706 | 1695 | 1733 | 1619 | 2908 | 2919 | 8747 | 9429 |
| Friendica | 2502 | 2509 | 2469 | 2660 | 1296 | 1691 | 3454 | 4734 |
| Forgejo | 131 | 133 | 115 | 122 | 539 | 390 | 489 | 1168 |
| Funkwhale | 290 | 290 | 302 | 270 | 191 | 238 | 429 | 1114 |
| Flohmarkt | 26 | 23 | 20 | 24 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 40 |
| | | | | | | | | |
| Fediverse | 965707 | 927839 | 962380 | 1006983 | 826717 | 907936 | 1119336 | |

Difference^[1]^:
| Software | -1 Day[1D] | -1 Week[7D] | -1 Month[30D] | -3 Months[90D] | -6 Months[180D] | -1 Year[365D] | -All-Time Maximum |
| :——– | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: |
| Piefed | 1 | -511 | -646 | 3348 | 3494 | 4933 | -894 |
| Lemmy | -14 | -295 | -2301 | 1814 | -687 | -18191 | -35815 |
| Mbin | 0 | -16 | -83 | 36 | -79 | -139 | -3227 |
| Threadiverse | -13 | -822 | -3030 | 5198 | 2728 | -13397 | |
| | | | | | | | |
| Mastodon | 37878 | 3480 | -30248 | 76929 | 63919 | -113932 | -1975856 |
| Pixelfed | 119 | -93 | -8250 | 36709 | -7356 | -32803 | -232142 |
| Peertube | -36 | 1678 | 4181 | 17888 | 20869 | 10198 | -36 |
| Loops | -85 | -932 | -3889 | 2563 | -21806 | 0 | -25052 |
| Bookwyrm | 11 | -27 | 87 | -1202 | -1213 | -7041 | -7723 |
| Friendica | -7 | 33 | -158 | 1206 | 811 | -952 | -2232 |
| Forgejo | -2 | 16 | 9 | -408 | -259 | -358 | -1037 |
| Funkwhale | 0 | -12 | 20 | 99 | 52 | -139 | -824 |
| Flohmarkt | 3 | 6 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | -14 |
| | | | | | | | |
| Fediverse | 37868 | 3327 | -41276 | 138990 | 57771 | -153629 | |

Change (%)^[1]^:
| Software | -1 Day[1D] | -1 Week[7D] | -1 Month[30D] | -3 Months[90D] | -6 Months[180D] | -1 Year[365D] | -All-Time Maximum |
| :——– | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: | ——-: |
| Piefed | 0.0% | -8.8% | -10.9% | 172.8% | 195.1% | 1401.4% | -14.5% |
| Lemmy | -0.0% | -0.8% | -5.9% | 5.2% | -1.8% | -33.1% | -49.3% |
| Mbin | 0.0% | -2.1% | -10.1% | 5.1% | -9.6% | -15.8% | -81.3% |
| Threadiverse | -0.0% | -1.9% | -6.6% | 13.8% | 6.8% | -23.8% | |
| | | | | | | | |
| Mastodon | 5.2% | 0.5% | -3.8% | 11.2% | 9.2% | -13.0% | -72.2% |
| Pixelfed | 0.1% | -0.1% | -7.2% | 52.5% | -6.5% | -23.5% | -68.5% |
| Peertube | -0.1% | 3.8% | 10.1% | 64.8% | 84.8% | 28.9% | -0.1% |
| Loops | -1.8% | -16.3% | -44.9% | 116.2% | -82.1% | 0.0% | -84.0% |
| Bookwyrm | 0.6% | -1.6% | 5.4% | -41.3% | -41.6% | -80.5% | -81.9% |
| Friendica | -0.3% | 1.3% | -5.9% | 93.1% | 48.0% | -27.6% | -47.1% |
| Forgejo | -1.5% | 13.9% | 7.4% | -75.7% | -66.4% | -73.2% | -88.8% |
| Funkwhale | 0.0% | -4.0% | 7.4% | 51.8% | 21.8% | -32.4% | -74.0% |
| Flohmarkt | 13.0% | 30.0% | 8.3% | 44.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% | -35.0% |
| | | | | | | | |
| Fediverse | 4.1% | 0.3% | -4.1% | 16.8% | 6.4% | -13.7% | |

Tracker Comparison^[1,2]^:
| Software | Fediverse-Observer^[1]^ | FediDB ^[2]^ |
| :——– | ——-: | ——-: |
| Piefed | 5285 | 5591 |
| Lemmy | 36803 | 47763 |
| Mbin | 740 | 1349 |
| Threadiverse | 42828 | 54703 |
| | | |
| Mastodon | 761307 | 1002327 |
| Pixelfed | 106671 | 111005 |
| Peertube | 45477 | 41263 |
| Loops | 4769 | 4844 |
| Bookwyrm | 1706 | 3922 |
| Friendica | 2502 | 3244 |
| Forgejo | 131 | 1414 |
| Funkwhale | 290 | 757 |
| | | |
| Fediverse | 965707 | 1223479 |

• Source: [1] Fediverse-Observer, [2] FediDB
  

Notes:

1. Threadiverse is Piefed, Lemmy, and Mbin. Fediverse only accounts for listed software [12], not the other [117] software tracked by Fediverse-Observer.
2. Fediverse-Observer provides daily MAU back to 20221130. FediDB only provides a current snapshot (snapshot within the last 15 minutes, no time series data) and only tracks some of the software [67].
3. FediDB seems to use unclear math to get there counts and overestimate the MAU on most software (see previous post, if interested in learning more).
   

Thanks for the numbers! Will check out the prior post you linked.

“Note 3” and the “Edit” would be the items of interest, with regards to the FediDB MAU issue.

It looks like a LOT of services are dying. Looking ar current numbers vs 1 year ago, Lemmy had 55k vs today 37k. That’s a huge loss.

Mastodon went from 875k to 761k. That’s a massive loss.

Don’t forget to look at “threadiverse”…but the numbers aren’t that much better at a first glance. Looked like sharp downward in the last three months even.

I’m not sure where you are looking and seeing that specific decline. In the last 3 months the threadiverse is up ~13.8% and the fediverse +16.8%.

Having looked at these numbers regularly I would say there is a natural ebb and flow to the services.

Certainly some of the services are having significant struggles (ex. Bookwym), but overall the fediverse seems to be getting stronger.

Where I get that from is that most of the services had huge initial spikes when they were announced. Unfortunately, they do not appear to have had feature parity with proprietary options and quickly lost their huge spikes. After their massive drops after release, they appear to be working on improving their service and (generally) have steadily been gaining users back.

TLDR: if you ignore the initial release growth spike and subsequent drops, most of the services have been improving their features and growing back their userbase.

The Lemmy YoY dynamics in particular are brutal, but to be honest it’s understandable. A lot of people were looking for reddit alternatives in Q1 2025 and its reasonable to expect that a significant portion wouldn’t stick with Fedi.

IMO, Piefed has the potential to be much more “sticky” than Lemmy.

IMO, Piefed has the potential to be much more “sticky” than Lemmy.

Why, and when should I expect all my Lemmy posts to disappear into the ethereal dustbin of history? (Serious question on both counts.)

I think a few things help Piefed over Lemmy.

Piefed development seems to be much faster. Piefed is at v1.7, while its been 12+ months since Lemmy devs said they would delivery v1.0 in 6 months (probably still a few months away from v1.0).

Additionally, Piefed doesn’t have the “tankie” problem. Arguments have been made that it’s not a “real” problem because of the option to defederate, but from what I’ve seen (ex. Reddit posts/comments) the reputation damage is still in effect, regardless of it’s a “real” problem or not.

When will Lemmy disappear? I doubt it really will. Since it federates with other software (ex. Piefed) it never has to really worry about having too few users. If Lemmy has 1 user and Piefed has 1M users, Lemmy has access to 1M+1 users (same reason why Piefed has been able to grow so fast, it can lean on Lemmy’s userbase).

Really though, if development significantly slowed or stopped, I suspect Lemmy would still last years (ex. I think there is still a mbin instance even though mbin forked off a couple years (?) ago).

I think it will be a very interesting day when communities can move instances (I believe that is being worked on). That will remove a large amount of instance inertia and I would expect to see some major community migrations to other instances.

Interesting, thanks.

I think it will be a very interesting day when communities can move instances (I believe that is being worked on)

Including from Lemmy to Piefed?

I’ve heard in the past that Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin devs talk to each other about how to implement features.

So, I’m hopefully it’s interoperable, but have no real information to go on that it will/would be.

Did a quick search through Piefed’s code repository. I don’t see community migration, but they are working on instance migration (Lemmy instance could become a Piefed instance).

Interesting.

instance migration (Lemmy instance could become a Piefed instance)

So 2 possibilities: a Lemmy community could migrate to a Piefed server, or a Lemmy server could become a Piefed server.

Makes sense that both should be possible. As I understand it, both fit the forum paradigm (or whatever the term is) of ActivityPub.

What’s important to me (and I’d argue for the fediverse too) is that we limit the amount of fragmentation and splintering and forking and egos in all this.