build your community a world of its own.

A space your community governs together, built around how you communicate and organise, and as connected to the open social web as you choose.

Launch your community Explore ↓

open source · no VC · no ads federated, connected from day one yours to govern & to leave

Illustration by Rocco Lombardi

The same Bonfire, in many different hands.

Publication

A magazine becomes a community under its own masthead.

Readers debate, subscribe and belong in a space the publication controls, while publishing stays on the site they already use.

See how Jacobin did it

Research network

Everyday research exchange becomes an open scholarly commons.

Conversation and research objects live together, so labs can connect to a wider commons without handing their work to a publisher.

Visit the Open Science Network

Neighbourhood

A neighbourhood becomes a digital town square residents control.

Residents post notices, organise events and decide together with no data broker or platform gatekeeper between them.

Explore community stories

Makerspace

A fablab becomes one shared workshop, online and off.

People, projects and practical knowledge come together in a space the makers govern, instead of scattered chats and booking sheets.

Explore these building blocks

Festival

A festival becomes a community that outlasts the weekend.

The crowd gathers before the gates open, stays together through every set, then settles into a living archive with a home of its own.

Explore these building blocks

A union, a co-op, a school—or yours.

Every community can write a different recipe from the same open building blocks.

Browse all building blocks →

Every space takes shape in three acts.

01 Gather Claim your space A home that is truly yours to govern.
02 Shape it Pick your building blocks Fit the tools to how your community works.
03 Connect Open the doors Connect to specific communities or the entire open social web.

Gather

First, a place that's truly yours.

The mythical "global town square" is fine for chatter, but lousy for organising. When you need specific people to see something, act on it, and follow through, you need a place of your own: with members, shared rules, a calendar, and a way to decide things together.

From day one, you set the rules, who joins, who sees what, who decides, what features you need, how you configure them. No mysterious algorithm, no landlord who can sell the building from under you. And if you ever want to move, you take everything with you.

Decide together

Govern, your way

Custom roles, shared profiles, and consent-based tools. Distribute power to match how your community makes decisions.

Safety without burnout

Hold the line, together

Circles and boundaries decide who can see and reply; shared blocklists and moderation tools spread the load, so no one carries it alone.

Built in anti-enshittification

Take everything with you

Import and export all your data: posts, relationships, settings. A space can't be turned against its people when everyone is free to leave with everything.

Shining a light on the power of defaults

Defaults, not dictates

Admins define the defaults; every member can see exactly how the space is configured, and override settings for themselves.

Shape it

Then, made to fit, by you.

Bonfire is assembled from the building blocks you pick. Include what your community needs, leave out the rest, give it your look and feel, and it becomes a space that's unmistakably yours. No two communities end up the same.

Your domain, your name, your look. End to end. Members arrive at your space, not a precarious corner of a platform you don't control.

Woodcut illustration: a bird carrying a burning branch across the night, lighting fires below as it goes — **A home that fits.** It matches how your community already works, and no two end up the same.

Screenshot: creating a poll in Bonfire — **Assemble your building blocks.** Switch features on and off from the settings (groups, consent-based decision-making tools, events, and more), and the space reshapes itself around them.

Screenshot: setting boundaries on who can see and reply to a post — **Start from a preset.** Pick a space that's already close to what you need, then adjust block by block until it fits.

No two end up alike, see how different communities made it their own →

Connect it

Then, open to the world, as far as you choose.

Many interconnected worlds, not one massive platform. From day one your space can be linked to millions of people across the open social web, so your community doesn't start from scratch. No central power dictates the rules. Autonomous spaces, connected on their terms.

You decide exactly how open or closed to be:

Your local community

Invite-only, quiet and warm, a space just for your people. Nobody else joins your bonfire unless you say so.

A trusted archipelago

Connected only with your friends, allies and communities you trust, and form a private interconnected network together (see archipelago mode).

The open web

Follow and be followed across every other Bonfire, Mastodon, PeerTube, etc, (the fediverse), with bridges to ATproto/Bluesky and more, so no one is left out.

Discover the features

Everything your community needs, and nothing it doesn't.

See all features

A kit of composable building blocks: switch on what you need, leave out the rest. Swipe through the toolkit.

Groups & topics

Spaces with their own members, rules, and calendar. Topics keep conversations findable instead of collapsing into one feed.

Learn more

Decide together

From quick polls to consensus building and score voting: the lightest process that fits the decision.

Learn more

Federated comments

Embed a comment thread on any website. Replies flow in from the whole fediverse and live on in your community.

Learn more

Post & Comment

Short updates or long-form, with a composer that adapts and threads that branch, so conversations stay legible as they grow.

Learn more

Feeds & Discovery

Build the feeds you want with the filters that matter to you. No mysterious algorithm deciding what you get to see.

Learn more

Circles & Boundaries

Every post carries its own rules: who can see, reply or quote. Room for real relationships, beyond the binary of "friends" or followers.

Learn more

Safety & Moderation

Share the responsibility, import and manage blocklists, and switch off the dark patterns that make a place hostile by default.

Learn more

Make it yours

Pluggable extensions all the way down. Even the core. Add what you need, fork what almost fits, drop the rest.

Learn more

Federation & Reach

From quiet and invite-only to the whole fediverse and beyond, you decide how far to open the doors.

Learn more

Your data

Import and export everything, migrate instances without starting from scratch. Nothing here holds you hostage.

Learn more

Beyond the microblog

Events, polls, tasks, mutual aid, open science. Building blocks for what your community needs.

Learn more

How we build matters as much as what we build.

Where the tech industry says "move fast and break things", we've chosen a different tempo: care, deep listening, collective stewardship. Building software slowly, for the long haul.

Maintenance comes firstOur crowdfunding campaign set care and maintenance as the condition of success, before any shiny stretch goal.

People before releasesWhen life intervenes, the team redistributes tasks and slows down the release cycle. Resilient relationships, not just reliable code.

No one owns usFree open source (AGPL licensed), super-forkable, not for profit, no investors, no ads.

Bring your people home.

Launch your community

Wander the demo Co-design it with us Talk to a human

Host it yourself, or rely on our cooperative hosting network. You don't have to do it alone.

Ask not what Bonfire is. Ask what it could be, in your hands.