While Twitter is one of the most well-known social media platforms, it’s far from the most widely used one. With around 463 million users, Twitter lags behind more popular networks such as Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Weibo, and Telegram.
What sets Twitter apart from platforms like TikTok is that Twitter is a microblogging platform. In other words, while networks like Telegram focus more on messaging and platforms like TikTok focus more on videos, Twitter allows people to create and publish short posts.
However, despite Twitter’s popularity, it has some problems. It is centrally controlled, which means that the owners have full control over the platform.
Sometimes, they block accounts or ban users for seemingly no valid reason. Some people don’t like Twitter’s politics, while others simply don’t like the control it has.
Twitter isn’t open source, either. It makes money by selling ads, and there are various privacy concerns about user data on Twitter.
Furthermore, all tweets have a character limit, which makes some people feel restricted in what they can express.
Many feel that the character limit on Twitter not only restricts them, but it also restricts their friends, making it more difficult to keep up with what is really happening in their friends’ lives. After all, there is only so much you can say in a short tweet, so people often end up posting insightful thoughts instead of more meaningful updates.
Update: Elon Musk bought Twitter, and it has been going down the drain ever since. Elon introduced a paid verification feature, which allows anyone to get a blue check mark by just paying for it, making the blue verification check mark virtually pointless.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for most people, however, was when Twitter started introducing limits to how many tweets unverified accounts could view per day. While this was announced as a temporary measure, many people saw it as the start of the decline of Twitter, and the need for a Twitter alternative became more pressing than ever.
Regardless of why you’re looking for a Twitter alternative, you have options. Today, I will be showing you the 19 best Twitter alternatives out there.
19 Best Twitter Alternative Sites
1. Threads (Android/iOS) – New Twitter Alternative
Instagram has now introduced Threads, which is the new Twitter alternative. As soon as it was released, there was a rush to get on Threads, with both celebrities and private individuals signing up.
In just a few days, Threads saw one hundred million people sign up, according to The Verge. That’s insane!
The format is slightly similar to Twitter, but not entirely. It’s connected to your Instagram account, so you can sign in with your Instagram account, follow people you already follow on Instagram, and post content from Threads to your Instagram account.
Unlike Instagram, the primary focus is on text posts, like Twitter, not on visual posts. Posts can have texts of up to 500 characters, but you can also post pictures and videos of up to five minutes long.
Twitter, on the other hand, still restricts users to 280 characters per tweet unless they sign up for the paid Twitter Blue subscription.
You can like and reshare Threads posts, just like you can on Twitter.
According to Instagram, the plan is to make Threads interoperable with other social networks like Mastodon.
Threads has been hailed as the Twitter-killer, although it remains to be seen whether it will outperform Twitter, which has been around for much longer, in the long run.
While Threads is connected to your Instagram account, it’s a separate app that you must download separately.
2. Mastodon – Best Twitter Alternative
Mastodon is my top recommended Twitter alternative. Like Twitter, it is a microblogging platform, a place where you can publish thoughts and short insights.
On Mastodon, posts are called “toots” instead of “tweets,” but they’re pretty much the same thing.
The difference between Twitter and Mastodon is that Mastodon is entirely decentralized and open source. While it doesn’t have nearly as many users as Twitter, it’s still probably the largest open-source and decentralized social media platform out there.
How exactly does it work? Instead of one centralized server, Mastodon is a network of different servers.
Users can set up their own servers or join existing servers.
Each server, or community, can set its own rules and moderation policies. As such, Mastodon is able to combat hate with community-based moderation while relinquishing control and allowing users to decide the type of content to allow in their communities.
There is the main Mastodon.social server, which isn’t focused on any particular niche, but many other servers are available, as well. All the servers are interconnected as nodes in a network.
The interface of Mastodon is very similar to Twitter. Profiles look similar, but users can enjoy a wide range of privacy controls.
A mastodon, by the way, is an extinct mammal that kind of looks like an elephant, hence the “toot” part (which is what posts on Mastodon are called).
There’s another reason to switch to Mastodon. By default, the character limit is 500 characters, which is a lot longer than Twitter’s character limit.
However, some people have taken Mastodon’s source code and forked it to allow even longer posts. Remember, Mastodon is open source, which means you can use it to create your own social network that looks similar to Twitter instead of simply creating a Mastodon instance.
In fact, a number of other social networks actually took their source code from Mastodon. One of them is Gab, while others include Tooter and even Donald Trump’s social network, “Truth.”
Mastodon does have an official iOS app, but various third-party apps have been available for a long time.
Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, a network of federated servers that include other open source Twitter alternatives.
All of these social networks can communicate with each other. So, even if you set up an instance on Mastodon, you can communicate with other servers set up on other decentralized platforms on the Fediverse.
3. Diaspora
Another decentralized alternative to Twitter is Diaspora, by the Diaspora Foundation. Unlike Twitter, it is distributed as opposed to centralized, with many interconnected servers, also called pods.
First, you register with a pod (or create your own pod), and you can then interact with all other interconnected pods. Unlike Twitter, you don’t have to worry about data or privacy concerns, as Diaspora gives you full control over your privacy – you can use it anonymously, without revealing your identity.
Furthermore, Diaspora doesn’t own your data or content, and it will never give any of your data over to a corporation or advertiser. You don’t have to worry about Diaspora getting hacked and your data being leaked or Diaspora handing your information over to the government.
Like Twitter, Diaspora allows you to use hashtags for discovery purposes. You can @mention people, just like on Twitter, and you can “heart” or reshare posts.
Diaspora also allows you to sort your contacts into different follower lists, so you can share some thoughts or updates with only a certain group of people. These different lists are called “aspects,” and it’s easy to add someone to an aspect.
Unlike Twitter, Diaspora aims to foster real, deep, insightful conversations. As such, it has a character limit of 65,535 characters – so you’re not limited to short posts like you are on Twitter.
One cool thing about Diaspora is that it allows you to post from Diaspora to your other social media profiles on other networks, including WordPress, Twitter, and Tumblr.
4. Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social media network in the world, with almost three billion users. It’s unlike Twitter in many ways.
While it has some of the same problems as Twitter when it comes to centralization, control, privacy concerns, and advertising, people still prefer it to Twitter.
First, it doesn’t limit you to short tweets. You can create long posts, short posts, video posts, live videos, image posts, and more.
Facebook is much better for engaging with friends and family and keeping up with their lives. Instead of only following people, you become friends with people, and you both see each other’s updates.
You can also simply follow a profile or page instead of becoming their Facebook friend, but you will only see public posts, not private posts, as Facebook allows you to set different privacy controls for different posts.
Facebook is a lot more visual than Twitter. While Twitter lets you post images and videos, too, Facebook lets you create image albums, making it easy to organize your life in pictures.
Facebook is also better for businesses. Businesses can set up Facebook Pages, which gives them the ability to advertise, view in-depth insights, put out new types of content (like polls), and reach more people.
On Facebook, you can create or join groups that focus on different interests. People can join a group, create posts, and comment on other posts, thus forming a community.
Furthermore, Facebook has something called Facebook Marketplace, available in some locations, which allows people to buy and sell products.
It’s kind of like Craigslist, but without the anonymity. People will be using their personal profiles, and you can leave reviews for sellers.
There is also Facebook Dating, which is available in some locations. It uses a swipe system, like Tinder, but the dating profiles are based on the users’ personal Facebook profiles.
Facebook is a lot more personal than Twitter, in general. While people can create anonymous profiles on Twitter, Facebook does require you to use your own name, unless you are creating a business page.
Nevertheless, you can create a page instead of a profile and use it as a blogging platform anonymously.
Finally, Facebook beats Twitter when it comes to messaging. There is a separate app, called Facebook Messenger, that makes messaging friends on mobile easy – there is even a Facebook Lite version for those with slow phones with limited space.
Personally, I feel Facebook is just more intuitive than Twitter. It doesn’t have tons of hashtags taking up half of each post, and it often allows for deeper discourse.
5. Tumblr
Regarded by some as an ancient relic of the past, Tumblr is still an excellent alternative to Twitter. While many users migrated to Mastodon after Tumblr banned adult content, it remains a great place to find like-minded individuals who share your passions and interests.
Like Twitter, Tumblr is a microblogging platform. However, it tends to be more anonymous than Twitter.
You don’t need to use your real identity in your Twitter profile, either, but Tumblr tends to attract people who want to create a second identity or are looking for a place where they can be their true selves. On Tumblr, they can create a blog and talk about their deepest and darkest thoughts.
Tumblr doesn’t limit how long your posts can be. Due to that, many people use it as a sort of diary or journal, which isn’t possible on Twitter due to Twitter’s restrictive post limits.
The interface is clean and easy to navigate, and you can follow other users or publish your own posts, adding videos, images, links, and hashtags.
You can share posts, repost them to your own blog, or like them. There is also a messaging system that allows you to communicate with other Tumblr users.
6. 4chan
4chan is a microblogging platform that is quite unique – it’s entirely anonymous. Unlike Twitter, you don’t need to register for an account to create a post.
The point of 4chan is to keep posts and users anonymous. There are boards dedicated to different interests, like anime or business.
Anyone can create a post on any board, complete with an image and an accompanying text. The image can be a placeholder, such as a random meme, but you do need an image to start a thread.
Then, users can comment on the thread you created – also anonymously.
On the one hand, 4chan is more private than Twitter – making it a more secure twitter replacement. On the other hand, that also means that it attracts trolls, extremists, and all kinds of questionable content – with anonymity guaranteed, it’s basically a free for all.
4chan does have rules, and there are some volunteer moderators who enforce those rules and ban IP addresses temporarily. However, in reality, moderation is sparse, and rules are often broken.
7. Misskey
Misskey is a decentralized alternative to Twitter that is part of the Fediverse, a network of interconnected federated servers used for social media, microblogging, and the like. Other networks that are part of the Fediverse include Mastodon and Diaspora, both of which are mentioned above.
Misskey has over 450,000 users and over 570 communities (called instances). You can join any instance – browse them here.
Instances cover topics ranging from anime to specific countries.
Over seven million notes are already published on the platform.
8. Friendica
Another Twitter alternative worth considering is Friendica, which is open source and decentralized. It allows you to create a small blog, add contacts to a list, show different profiles to different people, post to other users’ walls, and more.
You can follow people, share content, and create private communities of select group members. Private one on one messaging is also available.
One cool part about Friendica is that it allows you to expire old content after a certain period of time.
Friendica is part of the Fediverse and is a great alternative to Twitter if you want something open source that is also a bit more personal.
9. Pleroma
Pleroma is a decentralized alternative to Twitter that operates on the Fediverse. Users can join existing instances or create their own, and then share short posts, sort of like tweets.
When you view a server, you can choose to see posts shared to the server or all posts that users on the server interacted with. Before deciding to join a server or instance, scroll through the messages people shared to see if you would like to join that community.
An example of a Pleroma server is the Cawfee Club instance.
Once you are logged in, you can publish posts or view your feed, which will contain posts from people you are following. Like Twitter, you can interact with posts by resharing them or liking them, and you will get notifications when people mention you.
Unlike Twitter, however, each server can set the maximum number of characters for each post.
10. Micro.blog
Micro.blog is quite a fascinating Twitter alternative. It is a microblogging platform, where users can set up independent blogs, reply to blogs or posts, and follow other users to get their updates in their timelines.
The difference between Twitter and Micro.blog is that Micro.blog isn’t free.
You can use it for free, but you won’t be able to set up your own “microblog.” You will still be able to browse and reply to other blogs.
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? On the one hand, it might seem outrageous to pay for a social media platform, considering that all the major ones, such as Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok are free.
However, when you think about it, you aren’t really using any social platform for free (except the ones that are open source and decentralized).
There’s a famous saying about social media: The social media platform is not the product; rather, you are the product.
Indeed, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter sell you to advertisers. They may sell your data, or they may take up your time with annoying ads.
When you use a platform like Facebook, you are giving away a lot of personal data. Facebook tracks your activity, even your activity on other apps, and learns a lot about you – your interests, your friends’ interests, and your demographics.
It then uses that data to make money from advertisers. Facebook and Twitter aren’t truly free services.
If you have never watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, I recommend you take some time off to do so. You will learn a lot about social media and how social media platforms aim to get you addicted to the platforms, so you spend more time on them.
Once you realize that you are the product on Twitter, paying a small amount for an alternative social media and microblogging platform starts to make a lot more sense.
Furthermore, there’s another benefit of using Micro.blog instead of Twitter. As it is a paid service, it automatically cuts out the trolls, fake profiles, and bots that are so active on Twitter and which clutter up rational conversations with automated messages or insults.
Micro.blog is safer than Twitter. You won’t have to deal with ads, and you won’t have to worry about hateful trolls bothering you or bots spreading fake news.
It has a lot more to offer than Twitter, too – you are not limited to short tweets. Instead, you can publish short posts, long posts, videos, pictures, and even podcasts!
You don’t even have to start a blog from scratch. You can import your existing blog from WordPress, Tumblr, and Medium, and even redirect old URLs to your new microblog.
Micro.blog is run by a small team of people who believe in what they are doing. Pricing starts at $5/month for your own blog or $10/month for video and podcast hosting; you can always see updated pricing here.
11. Aether
Another interesting Twitter alternative is Aether, which is a decentralized peer-to-peer networking platform. It allows people to set up and join communities.
Aether has some really intriguing features. For example, posts get automatically deleted after six months – content will only stay alive longer than that if someone saves it.
In other words, if a post contains useless information, it will eventually be deleted.
Aether lets communities set up their own moderation policies, giving users more control and avoiding centralized censorship. However, unlike Twitter, moderation is open and transparent.
That’s because when content gets deleted, you can see exactly who deleted it and why they deleted it. In addition, there is a process for getting that content back, when warranted and appropriate.
Furthermore, communities can vote to impeach moderators if the moderator is out of control and remove posts when it isn’t right to do so.
Users can also block mods locally, which will revert changes made by that mod for that user.
This aspect of community control – voting, elections, and ballots – is something that Twitter and almost all other social media networks are missing. Users can elect and impeach moderators all the time – votes are always ongoing, and nothing is set in stone.
However, to make elections fair, only users who have been posting in and contributing to the community for at least two weeks to six months can vote. In addition, at least five percent of such people must vote in an election for it to be valid.
12. Bluesky
Bluesky is an invite-only social media network that copies Twitter in many ways and is designed to be a decentralized alternative.
It is building an open protocol, called AT Protocol, which will transform social media into an interoperable protocol, sort of like email or cell phones.
For example, you can call a phone number that is provided by any carrier, regardless of which carrier you are using – you can call a Verizon user even if you use AT&T. You can email someone who uses Yahoo Mail, even if you use Gmail.
On the other hand, if you are on Twitter, you can only message or interact with people on Twitter.
Bluesky is a microblogging platform built on top of the interoperable AT Protocol.
The app also takes a different approach to moderation than Twitter. For example, it allows people and organizations to create their own labeling of inappropriate content – and here’s the catch: any user can decide to subscribe to these labels or not (they won’t be subscribed by default).
Bluesky was a project that Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, launched while he was still CEO. He is now no longer CEO of Twitter but still sits on the board of Bluesky.
Unfortunately, Bluesky is still invite-only for now, but it will eventually be released to the public. For now, you can join the waitlist at Bsky.app or ask a friend who has Bluesky if they have an invitation code they can send you (Bluesky periodically distributes these codes to its existing users).
At the moment, Bluesky has over 50,000 users, according to its FAQs page.
13. Post
Post is a newer social network that is starting to gain traction. It was created in late 2022 as an alternative to Twitter, focusing more on the journalism aspect of Twitter, hence the URL Post.news.
It borrows heavily from Twitter’s design. Your news feed will be in the middle, trending topics and recommended accounts to follow will be on the right, and your profile and settings will be on the left, as shown in the following screenshot.
You can follow accounts from news organizations such as CNN, individual journalists, or regular people. You can like and reshare posts, but what makes Post quite unique is the Post Points system.
You can use Post Points to tip users for content you enjoyed and to access premium content. When you start out, you will have a starting balance of just 50 points, which you can top up at any time.
Each Post Point is worth one cent, so 100 Post Points is worth a dollar.
You can also earn points by creating content on Post. If you create a post that has at least 280 characters, you can set it to premium and require users to pay with Post Points to access it.
However, even for free posts, you can receive tips from users who enjoyed your content. By building up a sizable following, you can sprinkle some premium posts among your free ones and earn extra cash.
You can withdraw Post Points you earned for cash.
14. Spoutible
Spoutible is a social media network launched this year by Christopher Bouzy, who also founded
Bot Sentinel, an analytics service that tracks fake news and harassment on Twitter.
His goal with Spoutible was to create a social media network where people can spout what’s on their minds but without the harassment, racism, and xenophobia that is commonly found on Twitter.
It integrates with Bot Sentinel to identify problematic accounts.
15. CounterSocial
CounterSocial is a social media network that claims to eliminate fake news, deepfakes, misinformation, trolls, and foreign influences. It uses artificial intelligence to scan uploaded content and ensure it doesn’t contain fake news.
Furthermore, it has integrated with Factlayer, a fact-checking utility, to color-code outbound links to news sites to help you quickly interpret a site’s political bias.
Not only that, but it claims to sanitize outbound links by automatically removing trackers embedded in the links that might track your activity.
CounterSocial doesn’t have any ads and claims not to collect your data for advertising. Instead, it relies solely on user donations, and it doesn’t even accept donations from donors who might have certain interests and would push CounterSocial to adopt certain ideologies.
It has a verification process for verified users that it claims to be thorough and which users can’t pay for, unlike on Twitter.
The interface itself is nice. I like how it gives you control over how you view content – one option is single column mode, which is somewhat modeled after Twitter.
In single column mode, you can switch between dark and light mode and select Ostrich Mode to filter out TV channels and other distractions.
In multi-column mode, you can have multiple columns and pin the content most important to you.
CounterSocial allows you to create watch lists of users, topics, and hashtags and filter out certain kinds of content you find offensive. When you create a post, which has a character text limit of 500 characters, you can add content warnings.
Also, when you create a post, you can choose for it to “self-detonate” and self-delete after a certain time.
The integration of VR is another thing that really makes CounterSocial unique. It allows people to interact with each other (using VR goggles) in virtual reality.
A virtual reality social media will enhance your online experiences and take them to a new level. You can join virtual events, share 3D models, attend DJ events, game together, and a lot more in VR Realms in CounterSocial.
CounterSocial is more than just a social media network. It has an integrated file sharing network with 500 TB of space that allows you to set limits to the files you share, such as how long they will be available for or how many times people can download them, with all files being encrypted.
You can create group channels for communication, including encrypted messages, and you can also set up video conferences that anyone can join, even people who don’t have CounterSocial accounts.
COSOTV (COSO is short for CounterSocial) offers live broadcasting from selected TV channels so you can stay on top of the news, while COSOCOM allows you to listen in to over 7,000 emergency radio broadcast channels (with autotune to tune out chatter) so you can learn about breaking events before they break the news.
CoutnerSocial has apps for Android and iOS.
16. T2
T2.social was founded by two former Twitter employees after Elon took over the company. The name stands for “Twitter 2,” although it’s still subject to change as the site is relatively new.
The interface is a bit similar to Twitter by design, and the character limit is the same as well. However, it is currently in invite-only beta mode, although the plan is to eventually open it to the public.
Content on the site, though, is available for browsing without an account. For now, you can join by heading to the homepage and clicking on “Join Waitlist” – then, just wait for an invitation.
Alternatively, if you know someone who is on T2, or if you can find someone online who is, ask them for an invite link.
17. Internet Relay Chat
You can also go back in time and use Internet Relay Chat, with mIRC being one of the most popular clients for it.
If you’re among the younger crowd, you may never have used or even heard of Internet Relay Chat. IRC was created in 1988 as a text-based messaging system that supports forums, one-on-one private chats, and now file and data transfer.
By nature, Internet Relay Chat is decentralized, unlike Twitter. That’s why, while it has lost most of its popularity due to the emergence of social media, there is a growing number of users returning to it, and not just for nostalgia.
Users can connect to a server via a client such as mIRC. There are various networks on Internet Relay Chat, so you can choose which network to join.
When you set up your client, you will select a network to join, such as DALnet or EFnet. Then, you will find channels/communities to join, with different channels revolving around different topics.
Here are some awesome IRC clients you can use:
- Pidgin for all operating systems
- mIRC for Windows
- LimeChat for macOS and iOS
- RevolutionIRC for Android
- WeeChat for terminal-based chatting
For a list of the most active networks to join, see here.
18. Reddit
Of course, there is Reddit as an alternative to Twitter. Unlike Twitter, posts have no length limit.
Reddit is quite different from Twitter in many ways, but it is also similar in certain ways. For example, there is a news feed, but instead of showing you posts from people you follow, it is mostly designed to show you posts from communities you have joined or might be interested in, although you can follow people as well.
There is a built-in messaging system, though, just like on Twitter.
Reddit groups or channels are called subreddits, which are communities based around different features. Each subreddit has its own mods who get to decide the rules governing the subreddit, offering more decentralization than Twitter.
19. Nostr
The final Twitter alternative we will be looking at is Nostr, a decentralized protocol for a global, open social network. Nostr, which stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay, was supported by Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter.
The goal of Nostr is to create a decentralized and censorship-free social media network. Since it’s just an open protocol, there are many clients you can use to access it.
For iOS, I like Damus, an iOS app that is a Nostr client. For Android, I prefer Amethyst.
Finally, for desktop, I like Lume. For a full list of clients, check here – some clients look similar to Twitter, while others don’t, and you can switch from one client to another at any time.
Wrapping It Up: What Is The Best Twitter Alternative?
The best alternative to Twitter is Threads. It’s connected to your Instagram account, so you will already have friends who are on Threads and who will follow you, which means you won’t have to start from scratch.
Also, because it’s owned by Meta, it has the resources to become successful, unlike many other Twitter alternative projects that might fade away and die out.
