An open source social network is software whose source code you are allowed to read, run and change under a published licence, so you can host your own members on your own server. The names that come up most are HumHub, Elgg, OSSN, BuddyPress, Open Social, Friendica and Mastodon, plus Discourse if you count forums. They are not interchangeable. This list gives each one its licence, language, latest release and the job it suits, checked on 6 November 2026.
Wbcom Designs, the company behind this site, makes BuddyNext and the Reign theme. We list them as a self-hosted WordPress option, and we say plainly where the others are the better pick.
What does an open source social network actually give you?
It gives you the code and the right to change it. It does not give you a finished, maintained, hosted community. That gap is where most first-time buyers get surprised.
Open source software is software published under a licence that lets you view the source, run it, modify it and usually share your changes. The licence decides the details. Some licences, like the GPL family, ask you to share your changes if you distribute the software. The AGPL goes one step further and covers software people use over a network, which is exactly what a social network is. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice, so read the licence file of any project before you build a business on top of it.
Here is what you get in practice.
- You can read every line, so nothing about how your members’ data is handled is hidden from you.
- You can change anything, or pay a developer to do it, instead of waiting for a vendor roadmap.
- You are not locked to one company’s pricing or hosting. If a project goes quiet, you still have the code.
- You can host the data where your legal and privacy needs say it must live.
And here is what you do not get.
- Hosting. Someone runs the server, and that someone is you or a host you pay.
- Maintenance. Updates, security patches, backups and spam control are your job, or you pay for them.
- Support. Most projects have a forum and documentation, and some sell support separately. Check each project’s own site.
- Members. The software is empty on day one. Growing a community is the same hard work on any platform.
One more point, and it trips people up. “Open source” and “no cost” are different things. Many open source projects sell hosting, paid modules, support or a separate commercial licence. A few of the tools in this list do exactly that, and we flag it below.
The market context is worth a line. According to W3Techs, WordPress is used by 39.5 percent of all websites (data from 5 November 2026). That is why several tools in this list are built on WordPress or sit beside it, and why the plugin and theme ecosystem around it is so large.
How do the main open source social network options compare?
Here is the short version, then a profile of each. Every cell comes from the project’s own repository or website, read on 6 November 2026. “Latest release” is the most recent version we could see on the project’s official page or release list.
| Project | Licence (as stated in the repo or site) | Main language | Latest release seen | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HumHub | AGPL-3.0-only, or a proprietary licence (dual licensing) | PHP | 1.19.3, 27 Oct 2026 | Company intranets and member networks |
| Elgg | MIT or GPLv2 for the core, GPLv2 for bundled plugins | PHP | 7.1.3, 5 Nov 2026 | Developers building a custom social engine |
| OSSN | Cryptographic Autonomy License 1.0 | PHP | 10.1, 1 Oct 2026 | A Facebook-style network on a plain PHP host |
| BuddyPress | GPL v2 or later | PHP (WordPress plugin) | 14.5.4, 23 Oct 2026 | Adding community features to a WordPress site |
| Open Social | GPL v2 (Drupal.org page); GPL-2.0-or-later (composer file) | PHP (Drupal distribution) | 13.1.0, 8 Sep 2026 | Drupal teams, nonprofits, large organisations |
| Friendica | AGPL v3 (LICENSE file) | PHP | 2026.05-1, 21 May 2026 | Personal and privacy-minded federated networking |
| Mastodon | AGPL-3.0 | Ruby | 4.7.5, 3 Nov 2026 | Joining or running a federated microblog server |
| Discourse (forum, not a social network) | GPL v2 or later | Ruby | Tag v2026.11.0-latest, 27 Oct 2026 | Structured discussion and support forums |
Two reading notes. First, a recent release date tells you a project is alive, not that it is the right fit. Second, the main language only matters if you plan to modify the code or hire for it. A PHP site runs on common hosting, while Ruby apps usually need a server you control.
HumHub: is it the best open source social network for organisations?
HumHub is the strongest pick when the “social network” is really a private network for a company, school or association. Its own site calls it open-source intranet and community software.
The building blocks are people, Spaces, content and modules. Spaces are areas for teams, departments, locations or projects, each with its own members and permissions. Content covers posts, articles, surveys, galleries, files and wiki pages. The site advertises more than 80 optional modules, among them News, Messenger, Calendar, LDAP and SAML single sign-on. It can run as a hosted service or on your own servers.
The licence deserves a careful read. HumHub’s LICENSE file says it uses a dual licensing model: you can use it under the AGPL-3.0-only, or under a proprietary licence. The site also lists three editions, Community, Professional and Enterprise. Check HumHub’s licence page for what each edition includes before you plan around a specific feature.
As of 6 November 2026, the latest release in its GitHub repository is 1.19.3, published 27 October 2026, and the repository was updated on 5 November. The main language is PHP.
Pick HumHub when you want an internal or members-only network, you need single sign-on with LDAP or SAML, and you are happy to run a PHP application beside your main website.
Look elsewhere when your main site is already on WordPress and you want the community to share its design, users and content. Then a WordPress-based option avoids running two systems.
Elgg: is it still worth using?
Yes, if you have developers. Elgg calls itself an “award-winning open source social networking engine”, a framework for building many kinds of social environments, from campus networks to internal company platforms.
It is a framework first and a finished product second. You get the engine and a set of bundled plugins, and you build the experience on top. That suits a team with a specific idea and PHP skills. It suits a non-technical founder much less.
Elgg’s LICENSE.txt says the bundled plugins in the /mod directory are available only under the GPLv2, and the remainder of the project is available under either MIT or GPLv2. That is a permissive combination for the core. The current download on elgg.org is 7.1.3, and the GitHub release of 7.1.3 is dated 5 November 2026, so the project is clearly active.
Pick Elgg when you want a code-first foundation for a custom network and have the people to build it.
Look elsewhere when you want to install, pick a theme and start inviting members the same afternoon. Check how many themes and add-ons exist for it before you commit.
OSSN: what is the Open Source Social Network project?
OSSN is a social network script in the classic Facebook style, with profiles, a timeline, groups, messaging, notifications, photo albums and comments. Its own site calls it a self-hosted, open source social network platform and a PHP social network script.
The site lists a REST API, Redis and Memcached caching support, multi-language support, a hooks and events system so you can build components and themes without editing core files, and a large catalogue of add-on components and themes. It also lists separate premium business apps in its marketplace, and a managed hosting service for people with no server experience. The core is presented as open source, and the paid items are extras beside it.
The licence is the unusual part. The repository’s LICENSE.md is headed “Open Source Social Network License (OSSNL) 4.0” and states that OSSN is licensed under the Cryptographic Autonomy License version 1.0. That is not one of the common GPL or MIT licences, so read it, or have someone read it for you, before you build a business or resell anything on top of it.
The latest GitHub release at the time of checking is OSSN 10.1, published 1 October 2026. The language is PHP.
Pick OSSN when you want a standalone, ready-made social network that runs on ordinary PHP hosting and you like its feature set out of the box.
Look elsewhere when you need a very large ecosystem of themes, developers and tutorials, or you want the licence terms everyone already knows.
BuddyPress: the open source social network that lives inside WordPress
BuddyPress is a WordPress plugin that adds social network features such as user profiles, groups, activity streams and private messaging, according to its WordPress.org plugin page. It turns an existing WordPress site into a community.
The plugin header in its source states the licence as GNU General Public License v2 or later, the same family as WordPress itself. The latest version on its plugin page is 14.5.4, last updated 23 October 2026. Its GitHub repository describes itself as a mirror of the project’s development SVN, which means development happens on the project’s own Trac and SVN, not on GitHub.
The big advantage is the surrounding ecosystem. Themes, add-ons, hosts and developers who know WordPress are everywhere. Your community and your blog, courses or shop can share users and one login.
The trade-off is that BuddyPress is a toolkit. Out of the box you get the engine and a basic look, and you add the rest. Our own post on building a private social network with BuddyPress walks through that, and BuddyPress alternatives compares the neighbours.
Reign, the theme we make, styles BuddyPress, so it is one way to give a BuddyPress site a finished community look without writing CSS.
Pick BuddyPress when you already run WordPress and want a long-established open source community layer.
Look elsewhere when you want the community to be the product itself, with a modern feed, moderation tools and onboarding built in from the start.
Open Social: the choice for Drupal teams
Open Social is a Drupal distribution for building online community spaces. Its Drupal.org project page calls it a community management system and says it is used by organisations such as the United Nations and the European Commission.
The Drupal.org page lists the licence as GNU GPL v2, and the composer file in its GitHub repository says GPL-2.0-or-later. The latest release on the project page is 13.1.0, released 8 September 2026, and the page lists 13 maintainers.
The people who pick Open Social are usually already in the Drupal world: government bodies, nonprofits and large organisations with developers who know the platform. It is aimed at organisations rather than casual consumer networking.
Pick Open Social when your team knows Drupal or already runs it.
Look elsewhere when nobody on your team speaks Drupal. Learning a content management system just to get a community is a heavy price compared with starting from the CMS you already use.
Mastodon and Friendica: what is a federated social network?
A federated social network is a group of independent servers that can talk to each other, so a person on one server can follow a person on another. Mastodon and Friendica both work this way, using open protocols such as ActivityPub.
Mastodon describes itself as “social networking that’s not for sale”, free, open-source software from a non-profit. The network is split across many independent servers, each one a separate entity with its own rules, and together they form what the page calls the fediverse. You can join a server or host your own. The repository’s licence is AGPL-3.0, the main language is Ruby, and the latest release we saw is v4.7.5, published 3 November 2026.
Friendica describes itself as a decentralised social network with “no central authority or ownership”. It supports ActivityPub, the diaspora* protocol, RSS and Atom feeds and email contact, and the README says it connects to Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed and others. The licence file is the GNU Affero General Public License v3, and the language is PHP. Its latest tagged release is 2026.05-1 from 21 May 2026, though the repository received new commits on 4 November 2026.
This is a different model from the others in the list. You are not building a branded community with your own look, member tiers and courses. You are running a node in a wider network. That is wonderful for open public conversation and for privacy-minded groups. It is a poor fit if your goal is a members-only space with paid access and a design that matches your brand.
Pick Mastodon or Friendica when you want to take part in the open fediverse, or run a server for a community that wants exactly that.
Look elsewhere when you need a private, branded space. The federated model is built around openness, not gated membership.
Is Discourse an open source social network?
No. Discourse is open source forum software. Its GitHub page calls it “a platform for community discussion”, an open-source community platform for those who want complete control over how and where their site is run.
It is excellent at one thing: structured discussion. It does not have the profile-and-feed shape of a social network, so we do not count it as one. The licence line on its repository reads “Licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2.0 (or later)”. The latest tag in the repository is v2026.11.0-latest, dated 27 October 2026, and the language is Ruby.
Running it means managing a Ruby application, which is why many teams use the official hosting that the project offers. Our post on Discourse alternatives on WordPress covers the other side of that decision, and forum vs Q&A vs ideas board helps you decide whether you need a forum at all.
Pick Discourse when the heart of your community is long, searchable discussion and support threads.
Look elsewhere when you want member profiles, a feed, spaces and a social feel.
Are SocialEngine and WoWonder open source?
The public pages of both present them as commercial products, not open source projects. We checked each on 6 November 2026 and report only what we saw.
SocialEngine. Its homepage never uses the phrase “open source” and names no open source licence. It mentions plans, a trial, pricing, support plans and a customer Client Area. It calls itself a “PHP Community Script” and describes “complete ownership of their source code and hosting environment”. That wording describes what a customer owns, not the licence terms of the core software. If the source licence matters to you, ask the vendor for the licence text before you buy.
WoWonder. Its homepage does not describe WoWonder as open source. It lists plans with “Life-time license” and “Resell the code to a client”, and purchases go through Envato marketplace links. That reads as a commercial script sold under a licence. The page does not state the specific licence terms.
Both can still be a sensible purchase. You may well receive the code and host it yourself. But “you can see the code you bought” and “the code is open source” are different statements, and a list called open source should not blur them.
Where does BuddyNext with Reign fit in this list?
BuddyNext is a self-hosted community engine for WordPress, and Reign is the community theme that gives it a finished design. Wbcom Designs makes both, so treat this section as a vendor view. BuddyNext’s own site describes it as a self-hosted community engine that installs on your own WordPress site, and it links to its source on GitHub. BuddyNext is covered as a self-hosted WordPress option rather than an open source project. Check the BuddyNext product page for licence terms.
What it does, as verified from the product itself: Spaces that are public, private or secret, with nested sub-spaces, roles, auto-join and invite links; hashtags, reactions, threaded comments, @mentions, polls in the feed and pinned posts; member profiles with custom fields, member types, a member directory, field-level privacy and an onboarding wizard; in-app notifications; and moderation with reports, strikes, suspensions, appeals, banned words, content warnings and a front-end queue. It also has private communities and gated spaces, search, a PWA, a REST API, and tools to export and erase personal data. Direct messages are powered by WPMediaVerse. A mobile app is in development.
The feed checks for updates by polling every few seconds by default. Instant delivery over WebSockets needs a paid add-on and your own server. Paid memberships, billing, email broadcasts and push notifications are also add-ons, so check the product page for licence details.
Reign adds the design layer: a dark mode toggle, RTL stylesheets, a mobile drawer menu, 27 block patterns, 8 style variations and a demo library with an installer. It styles BuddyNext, BuddyPress and BuddyBoss Platform. Reign has been on WordPress for 13 years.
There is a clear case for choosing something else. If you want an intranet with LDAP or SAML sign-on, HumHub is built for it. If you run Drupal, Open Social fits better. If you want to join the fediverse, Mastodon is the real thing. Choose BuddyNext with Reign when you want a branded community on WordPress that shares your site, your users and your plugins. Our post on upgrading a community with Reign and BuddyNext shows what that looks like, and you can open the BuddyNext live demo to try it.
How do you choose an open source social network?
Start with the model, then the stack, then the licence. Most bad choices come from skipping the first step.
1. Decide what kind of network you are building
There are four honest models in this list. A private organisational network points to HumHub or Open Social. A custom engine for developers points to Elgg. A community inside an existing website points to BuddyPress or BuddyNext. A node in an open public network points to Mastodon or Friendica. To confirm you picked the right one, finish this sentence: “My members will log in to ___.” If the answer is “my existing website”, pick a WordPress-based option.
2. Match the stack to the people you have
PHP projects like HumHub, Elgg, OSSN, BuddyPress and Friendica run on common hosting. Ruby projects like Mastodon and Discourse usually need a server or container setup you control. The easiest check is to ask who will fix it at 2 a.m. If the answer is nobody, budget for managed hosting or a maintenance contract.
3. Read the licence file, not the marketing
Open the LICENSE file in each repository. Look for what you can change, whether you must share your changes, and whether a separate commercial licence exists. HumHub’s dual licence and OSSN’s Cryptographic Autonomy License are good examples of why this matters. To confirm you understood it, write down in one sentence what you may do with a modified copy. If you cannot, ask a lawyer.
4. Check that the project is alive
Look at the release list and the date of the last commit. As of 6 November 2026, HumHub, Elgg, OSSN, BuddyPress, Open Social, Mastodon and Discourse all showed releases within roughly the last two months. Friendica’s last tagged release was May 2026, with newer commits since. Check again on the day you decide, because this changes.
5. Price the full cost, not the licence
Hosting, backups, security updates, email delivery, moderation time and any paid modules are the real cost. A project with no licence fee can cost more to run than a subscription, and sometimes much less. Work out both before you commit. For a wider look at the trade-offs between renting and owning, read best self-hosted community platforms.
6. Test with real members before you migrate anyone
Install your top two on a staging site, invite five people, and ask them to do the three things your community exists for. Watch where they get stuck. Our checklist of must-have social network features is a useful script for that test.
Questions people ask
What is the best open source social network software?
There is no single best. HumHub suits private organisational networks, Elgg suits custom builds, BuddyPress suits WordPress sites, Open Social suits Drupal teams, and Mastodon suits the fediverse. The right one is the one that matches your model, your stack and your team.
Is open source social network software free?
The code is available under a licence, but running a community still costs money for hosting, maintenance and often paid modules or support. Some projects, like HumHub and OSSN, also sell editions, apps or hosting alongside the open code. Check each project’s own pages for what is paid.
Is SocialEngine open source?
Its public homepage does not say so. It never uses the phrase “open source”, names no open source licence, and describes plans, pricing and a Client Area, which points to a commercial product. Ask the vendor for the licence text if this matters to you.
Can I build an open source social network on WordPress?
Yes. BuddyPress is a long-established open source plugin for this, and BuddyNext is a self-hosted community engine for WordPress, with its licence terms on the product page. Pair either with a community theme such as Reign. Our guide to building a private social network on WordPress covers the steps.
What is the difference between Mastodon and a social network I run myself?
Mastodon is one server in a federated network, where your members can follow and be followed by people on other servers. A self-hosted community like HumHub or BuddyPress is a closed site you control completely, with its own design, rules and membership. One is built for openness, the other for ownership.
Which one should you start with?
If your website runs on WordPress and you want a branded community that feels finished, start with a WordPress-based engine and a community theme. Reign is the theme we build for exactly that, together with BuddyNext, and it also works with BuddyPress. If your needs sit elsewhere, the profiles above should point you to the right project, and every one of them is worth a staging install before you decide.
Related reading
- Best self-hosted community platforms
- BuddyPress alternatives
- How to build a private social network with WordPress
- Build a private social network with WordPress and BuddyPress
- Discourse alternative on WordPress
- Best WordPress community plugins
- Best WordPress community themes
- Must-have features for any social network site