How many Mastodon instances are there?

[vmstan@vmst.io]

How many Mastodon instances are there? How many active users are there? Depends on where you look and how you count.

Quick sanity check across datasources...

vmcrawl
Instances: 9,226
MAU: 787,574

joinmastodon.org
Instances: 7,952
MAU: 780,355

FediDB
Instances: 9,193
MAU: 1,037,321

(Based on 20 Feb 2026 API data for all sources)

The world, may never know.

[mookie@weredreaming.com]

@vmstan@vmst.io vmcrawl ftw

[james@bne.social]

@vmstan Do we know that FediDB is only Mastodon instances? I'm suspecting it isn't.

[craftxbox@transfur.social]

@james @vmstan According to fedidb, yes.

[vmstan@vmst.io]

@craftxbox @james yeah, that was from an API call to their /software/mastodon endpoint.

[james@bne.social]

@vmstan @craftxbox Ah, yes. https://fedidb.com/software

Well, then.

[vmstan@vmst.io]

@james @craftxbox something is not adding up. The total for Mastodon is higher than the total for all active users across all platforms.

[craftxbox@transfur.social]

@vmstan @james I do think FediDB has been the subject of various spoofing attacks in the past, I do recall a server that didn't really exist briefly showing up with twice the MAU of the entire network before they dealt with it.

[linuxfiend@vmst.io]

@vmstan It's three.

[stinerman@mastodon.social]

@vmstan a man with 1 data source always knows how many instances there are. A man with 2 or more never knows.