What is tootik?

tootik is a federated social network written in Go that deliberately avoids a web interface. Users interact through Gemini clients, which provide a lightweight, privacy-focused, text-only experience suitable for low-bandwidth connections and screen readers. It implements a subset of ActivityPub to federate with platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, Sharkey, Friendica, Akkoma, GoToSocial, Mitra, and PieFed. Features include text posts with three privacy levels, quote posts, polls, Lemmy-style communities, bookmarks, full-text search, avatar uploads via Titan, automatic old-post deletion, account migration, and invite-only registration. All data lives in a single SQLite file, and the server is a single static binary that runs on a modest VPS or single-board computer. Installation is documented for Debian with systemd, including automatic TLS certificate generation (Gemini and HTTPS via Let's Encrypt) and a Garden Fence blocklist. Configuration is stored in a JSON file with options for registration policies, feed update intervals, and actor age limits. Authentication uses TLS client certificates rather than passwords. The project is licensed under Apache-2.0.

Should you self-host tootik?

tootik scores 47/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #53 of 69 in Social Networks & Forums. It has 211 GitHub stars.

It shipped 18 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v0.25.5, came out on 3 October 2026. New versions land roughly every 2 weeks.

Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. It is Apache-2.0-licensed and written mostly in Go.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is Discourse (83/100, 48 024 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See tootik vs Discourse side by side.