Mastodon or X: which alternative to Twitter?

X is free, your contacts are on it, and the feed never stops. The price lies elsewhere: targeted advertising, and an algorithm that decides what you see. Mastodon takes the complete opposite path. No ads, a chronological feed, a network that belongs to no one. Which leaves one question: what are you willing to trade for that?

The match in one table

Criterion	Mastodon	X (Twitter)
Price	Free (some instances ask for a donation)	Free
Advertising	None	Targeted
Feed	Chronological, no algorithm	Sorted by an algorithm
Network control	No company: independent servers that talk to each other	A single company
Source code	Open	Proprietary
Account migration	From one server to another, followers kept	Not applicable

What Mastodon does better

Everything about control. Your feed shows the accounts you follow, in the order they post, and nothing else. No ad slots, no algorithm-recommended content. It’s disorienting for the first few days, then surprisingly restful.

Decentralization changes the game too. The network runs on independent servers, the instances, which all talk to each other. Each instance has its own moderation rules, but no company controls the whole. And if your server no longer suits you, you move your account elsewhere without losing your followers. Try doing that with X.

As for getting started, the step is low: the interface looks like Twitter, and the mobile apps are mature, on iOS as on Android. The only real choice to make is your home server; just remember that a French instance like piaille.fr works very well to start.

What X does better

The crowd. Your contacts are already there, and I won’t wave that argument away. Mastodon has fewer users, especially in France: finding your favorite accounts takes effort, and an audience built over years doesn’t carry over. If your priority is reaching as many people as possible, the crowd is on X. It’s its only advantage in this comparison, but it’s very real.

What about the rest of the fediverse?

Mastodon replaces X, but the logic holds for other networks. Pixelfed does Instagram’s job, with a chronological feed and no advertising. Lemmy takes up Reddit’s community model, in federated form. All three speak the same language: from Mastodon, you can directly follow a Pixelfed account. That’s the fediverse. Different networks, one shared space.

Verdict

Choose Mastodon if you want out of the advertising model and a feed you don’t control. You keep the microblogging, you lose the crowd. It’s a trade-off I leave you to weigh, but it’s an honest one: nothing is hidden in the price.

Stay on X if your audience matters more than the rest, for your work or your visibility. Then do it knowingly: the service is free because your attention is sold to advertisers.

The detailed profile: Mastodon, and the full tour of decentralized social networks.