Fediverse relays

From Join the Fediverse
This article is a draft!
A lot of info might still be missing and the page might change at any time.


A relay is a piece of software that increases federation between instances that subscribe to that relay.
It is a great way for smaller instances to populate their federated timeline.

How to subscribe to a relay

Only instance admins can subscribe to a relay. In Mastodon you can do that by going to Settings > Administration > Relays. There you can enter the url of the relay - add "/inbox" at the end of it.
Then you just have to wait for your instance to be accepted by the relay owners.

List of ready to use Fediverse relays

Comparison of Fediverse relay software

relay name source works with
diaspora* Mastodon Misskey Pleroma
Activity relay https://github.com/yukimochi/Activity-Relay ✖️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
ActivityRelay https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/relay ✖️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Pub relay https://source.joinmastodon.org/mastodon/pub-relay ✖️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Seattle relay https://gitlab.com/jankysolutions/social.seattle.wa.us/relay ✖️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Social relay https://github.com/jaywink/social-relay ✔️ ✖️ ✖️ ✖️

How to install your own Fediverse relay for beginners

I'm going to write a guide on how to install Activity-Relay for beginners, but first I have to manage to install it myself.
Here is how far I've come

Create a server

To be written

Log in to your server

To be written

Install dependencies

Dependencies are apps you need to install before you can install the app you want.

  1. sudo apt install vim
    1. confirm with yes when asked
  2. sudo apt install git
    1. confirm with yes when asked
  3. sudo apt install docker
    1. confirm with yes when asked
  4. sudo apt install docker-compose
    1. confirm with yes when asked
  5. sudo apt install docker.io
    1. confirm with yes when asked

Install the relay with docker

Now you need to copy the app to your server

  1. git clone https://github.com/yukimochi/Activity-Relay.git -b v1.0.0
  2. vim config.yml
    1. make the file look like this.
  3. openssl genrsa | tee actor.pem
  4. chmod 600 actor.pem
  5. cd /root/Activity-Relay
  6. docker-compose build
    1. this will take a while and lots of red text will appear. Don't worry.
  7. docker-compose up -d
  8. docker-compose down