Misskey

RegionJapan

Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.

Overview

Misskey (Japanese ミスキー, “misukī”) is not a platform but an engine: free software from which anyone raises their own social network. The project states this without hedging: “Misskey is not a web service in itself but a foundation for creating one, roughly as WordPress is for a website”.

Hence the main thing for a practitioner: Misskey has no single owner, rules, audience, monetization or support — all of that belongs to a particular server. Misskey.io's rules do not apply on a neighbouring server, and the engine's documentation does not oblige an administrator to enable any given feature.

Development began in 2014 in Japan, by the author syuilo; originally it was a bulletin-board system, and the service became decentralized in 2018 with the move to ActivityPub — it is ActivityPub that ties a server to the federation and lets it exchange posts with servers running other software. The program is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 licence (the project's repository).

Below, two things are kept separate: what the engine can do, and how the largest Japanese server, Misskey.io, is arranged — the one run by 株式会社MisskeyHQ (kabushiki gaisha MisskeyHQ, MisskeyHQ Inc.).

Who's here

There is no such thing as a common audience “on Misskey”: every server publishes its own numbers itself, machine-readably. On the day of our check Misskey.io returns in the standard document about the server: 728,445 registered users and 171,181,957 posts created locally; registration is open. “Registered” is not the same as active, and the fields for monthly and half-yearly activity in the document are empty.

A second counter on the same server shows the network around it: 2,022,945 known users, 532,198,311 posts and 35,918 known servers. The difference between 728 thousand and 2 million is the federation: the server knows about users elsewhere whose posts reach it.

The server declares its interface languages itself: Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, French and German. The engine's documentation has been translated by the community into a dozen languages (the list is in the switcher).

Misskey.io's geography is limited not by the market but by the rules: the server does not provide services to residents of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Russia, Vietnam and China, because it cannot comply with the requirements of the GDPR and the UK GDPR.

Getting started

Choosing a server and registering

The first step is not registration but choosing a server: the rules, the language, the limits and who can ban you all depend on it. After that the order is the usual one: a “register on this server” button, an invite code (if the server is closed), a username, an email address and a password. The documentation warns about what is irreversible: a username cannot be changed after registration, and once an account is deleted the same name can no longer be taken.

On Misskey.io the requirements are stricter than usual. The server reports that email is mandatory at registration and Turnstile bot protection is enabled; the rules forbid registration through a VPN, a proxy or with a disposable email address, and all new accounts are checked by hand by several staff members — there are no automatic punishments. The terms add that the ban also covers connections from the addresses of hosting providers and clouds, but does not forbid simply reading the site.

There is no separate business account

The engine has no company verification and no special account type. The project does, however, name corporate scenarios among its uses: a server for a company's official promotion and a closed server for an internal network. A “business presence” on Misskey is more often a server of your own than an account on someone else's.

What you can publish

A post here is called a “note”. It contains text, images, video, audio, arbitrary files and polls; MFM markup, mentions, hashtags and a content warning (CW) are supported. Quoting and reposting are called a “renote”.

Visibility is set for each note separately: public, “home” (visible to everyone, but appearing in feeds only for followers), “followers only”, “direct”, and a separate “local only” switch that forbids passing the post to other servers; notes with “followers” and “direct” visibility cannot be renoted.

Numeric limits are set by the server. Misskey.io declares: the text of a note is up to 3,000 characters, and the maximum file size is 524,288,000 bytes (500 MB).

Files live in the “drive” — the account's file storage. An important warning from the project: the drive should not be treated as ordinary cloud storage — any file is available to anyone who knows its address, whether or not you attached it to a note; when a file is deleted, everything it was attached to disappears too.

Prohibitions are set by the server. On Misskey.io they include, among other things, publishing personal data, impersonation, collecting data beyond personal use, trading in accounts, advertising dubious sites, taking up the screen with text styling, repetitive renotes and media without an NSFW label; use of the service is forbidden to those under 13.

How to grow

The engine describes no algorithmic recommendation feed. The feeds are arranged explicitly — home, local, social and global — and differ by whose posts land in them (the description of visibility).

The tools the project names itself: channels for particular topics inside a server, “antennas” — feeds that collect notes by keyword, reactions with arbitrary emoji, a server's own custom emoji and a built-in charting mechanism showing statistics of server use.

Advertising on Misskey is a feature of a server, not of the network. The documentation describes it: advertising chosen by the server itself may be shown in feeds and elsewhere; the administrator sets the image, the address, the shape and the proportions of an ad in the control panel. The project separately asks you not to turn on ad blockers: some servers cover their costs with ads.

On Misskey.io advertising is sold through a separate application system: ads are shown in feeds, in the Play section, in search results and in the “explore” selection. Prices are published openly. For personal and non-commercial ads a 1200×80 banner costs 100 yen a day before tax, 1200×250 — 540 yen, 1200×500 — 3,680 yen; for direct commerce the same sizes cost 300, 2,790 and 6,380 yen; multipliers apply to the base price — display priority from 1.0 to 2.0 and a GIF image 1.2; the placement term is from 3 to 60 days, with 10% tax on top. The server discloses the display frequency too: one ad per 100 notes.

Path to monetization

There is no payment to authors for views on Misskey. The project itself lives on donations: “Misskey is a non-commercial project developed by a small team of volunteers, and we depend on donations”.

The earning mechanism the engine really does provide is monetizing your own server through roles. The project writes about this directly: roles let you fine-tune permissions and hand out badges, and they also “help you monetize your server”. A role carries a set of policies — the drive size limit, the right to publish public notes and so on; roles are granted manually or automatically by conditions, and when policies conflict priority decides.

Misskey.io uses exactly this mechanism. Its drive size limit depends on seniority and on support: a day after registration — 1,000 MB, under 30 days — 2,000 MB, from 30 days to a year — 10,240 MB, and further by year up to 34,816 MB in the eighth year; those who support it through pixivFANBOX get 51,200, 102,400, 204,800 and 512,000 MB by support tier. The data is given as of May 2026 and may change without notice.

The server's operator, meanwhile, is an ordinary commercial company: the disclosure under Japanese transactions law names 株式会社MisskeyHQ, an address in Shinjuku in Tokyo, the responsible manager Etou Yoshiki and payment by bank card.

The practical conclusion: income on Misskey is either reader support through external services (for Misskey.io that is pixivFANBOX) or your own server with paid roles and ad sales.

Tools and automation

The programmatic interface

The engine's interface is open and the same on every server. The project describes it like this: a public API on which you can build clients, integrated web services and bots; there is also a streaming interface for receiving events in real time.

The technical frame is simple: all requests are made with the POST method, request and response are in JSON except for file uploads; an access token is issued by hand in the account settings, through the platform's own MiAuth scheme (from version v12.27.0) or through OAuth 2.0 (from version v2023.9.0). Nobody reviews an application: development access is open by default.

Among built-in automation tools the project names webhooks, plug-ins and “Play” — small applications in the AiScript language.

Requirements for bots

Here again the server decides. Misskey.io's rules require a bot's owner to set the “bot” label, to name their own account in the description or a pinned note, to filter inappropriate images and turn on the NSFW label, to limit the frequency of replies, and, for bots with random texts, to post no more often than once every 30 minutes; a separate line requires you to write to [email protected] in advance if you collect 500 or more records of data a year.

Third-party services

We found no scheduling or analytics services with confirmed support for Misskey. The practical substitute is a script of your own: the interface is open and a token is issued without review.

Limits and rules

The rules are set by the server, not by the project. The engine has no common agreement; on Misskey.io the terms of 12 May 2026 apply, under which services are not provided to residents of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Russia, Vietnam and China, Japanese law applies, and the age threshold is 13.
Misskey.io's limits — 3,000 characters in a note, 500 MB per file; drive size from 1,000 to 512,000 MB depending on seniority and support.
Irreversibility. A username does not change, and a deleted name does not come back; deleting an account is a heavy operation, and once published, data is not guaranteed to be deleted from other servers in the federation.
Paid data deletion. For immediate deletion of all data together with backups Misskey.io charges 5,000 yen for a full wipe, 10 yen per post and 25 yen per file; manual deletion by the administration costs 15 and 30 yen, while ordinary deletion of posts, files and the account is free.
Robots. Misskey.io's robots file allows crawling of the site.

Who it's for

It suits projects that need their own social network under their own control: the engine is free, the AGPL-3.0 licence allows deploying and modifying it freely (the repository), and roles give a mechanism for paid access tiers. A company can raise a closed server for an internal network or an open one for promotion while staying connected to the federation.

It suits a Japanese audience and communities close to it: the largest server declares Japanese as the first interface language.

It does not suit companies from the European Union, the United Kingdom and Russia if Misskey.io specifically is what is meant: the server plainly refuses residents of those countries. It does not suit those looking for income from the platform: there is no payment to authors. And it does not suit projects without technical support: without a server of your own you depend on the rules of someone else's administrator.

Verified data

The checked data this deep dive rests on.

About the platform

the platform describes itself as follows: «Misskey.io は、株式会社MisskeyHQが運営する地球で生まれた分散マイクロブログSNSです。 Fediverse（様々なSNSで構成される宇宙）の中に存在するため、他のSNSと相互に繋がっています。 暫し都会の喧騒から離れて、新しいインターネットにダイブしてみませんか。 ※VPNや捨てメアドを利用しての登録は出来ません»

Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey is not a web service in itself but a foundation for creating one: free software for launching your own social network, which the project compares to WordPress for a website

It follows that Misskey has no common rules, audience or monetization: those belong to a particular server

source, checked 2026-07-28

development began in 2014 in Japan, by the author syuilo; originally a bulletin-board system, the service became decentralized in 2018 with the move to ActivityPub

The project's documentation

source, checked 2026-07-28

the program is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 licence

Data from the misskey-dev/misskey repository

source, checked 2026-07-28

the Misskey.io server is run by 株式会社MisskeyHQ (MisskeyHQ Inc.); the disclosure under Japanese transactions law names an address in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, the responsible manager Etou Yoshiki and payment by bank card · the source is dated 2026-05-12

The page was updated on 12 May 2026

source, checked 2026-07-28

Who's here

Misskey.io reports 728,445 users registered on it and 171,181,957 posts created locally; registration is open

The server's claim about itself; the fields for monthly and half-yearly activity in the document are empty, so it cannot be compared with MAU

source, checked 2026-07-28

the same server reports 2,022,945 known users, 532,198,311 posts and 35,918 known servers

The difference from the local numbers is the federation: the server knows about users elsewhere whose posts reach it

source, checked 2026-07-28

Account and access

on Misskey.io use of the service is forbidden to those under 13

The server's terms; on other servers the threshold may differ

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey.io requires an email address at registration and enables Turnstile bot protection; registration through a VPN or a proxy, disposable email addresses and connections from hosting providers' addresses are forbidden

The ban applies only to registration: ordinary reading of the site through a VPN is not forbidden

source, checked 2026-07-28

all new accounts on Misskey.io are checked by hand by several staff members; there are no automatic punishments · the source is dated 2026-04-30

The page was updated on 30 April 2026

source, checked 2026-07-28

a username cannot be changed after registration, and once an account is deleted the same name can no longer be taken

A general property of the engine

source, checked 2026-07-28

On closed servers registration is impossible without an invitation code — verbatim: «Invitation code (only if registration is by invitation only. If you do not have one, you will not be able to register.)». What an account can do is determined by roles and policies configured by the server's administrator — verbatim: «Role policies can be adjusted to implement permissions and feature restrictions» and «You can set policies that will be applied by default to all users in the role template (base role) settings». The documentation names no network-wide restriction that applies precisely because an account is new.

Misskey is server software, and the set of restrictions is set by the administrator of the particular server; verbatim from the project's official FAQ: «We do not provide or operate any servers that use Misskey software or its derivatives» and «We also do not have the ability to regulate services using Misskey software». The robots.txt of misskey-hub.net was read in full (24 lines) — it contains no executable directives, only comments about content signals; the robots.txt of misskey.io was also read in full («user-agent: *», «allow: /»). The docs pages on misskey-hub.net themselves return a Cloudflare challenge, and it was not circumvented: the texts are taken from the official source of the same documentation published by the Misskey Project — raw.githubusercontent.com/misskey-dev/misskey-hub-next, the files content/en/docs/... and content/en/contact-faq/...

source, checked 2026-08-07

On servers that ask for an email you have to follow the link in the letter — verbatim: «you will receive an confirmation email for servers that ask for a email address, so please click on the link in the email as soon as possible». On closed servers, an invitation code from the administrator. Further relaxations depend on which roles the administrator grants manually or by condition: «Manual: Manually assign and unassign users», «Conditional: Set conditions for assignment. Users who meet the conditions will be assigned automatically».

source, checked 2026-08-07

Business terms

the project names corporate scenarios among its uses: a server for a company's official promotion and a closed server for an internal network

The engine has no separate business account and no company verification

source, checked 2026-07-28

What you can publish

a note contains text, images, video, audio, arbitrary files and polls; MFM markup, mentions, hashtags and a content warning (CW) are supported

Quoting and reposting are called a renote

source, checked 2026-07-28

visibility is set for each note: public, home, followers only, direct; a separate «local only» switch forbids passing the post to other servers; notes with «followers» and «direct» visibility cannot be renoted

The engine's documentation

source, checked 2026-07-28

Content

Misskey.io's rules forbid, among other things, publishing personal data, impersonation, collecting data beyond personal use, trading in accounts, advertising dubious sites, taking up the screen with text styling, repetitive renotes and media without an NSFW label

The rules of a particular server, not of the engine

source, checked 2026-07-28

Advertising

advertising is a server feature: the administrator sets the image, the address, the shape and the proportions of an ad in the control panel, and delivery goes to feeds and other places

The project asks you not to turn on ad blockers, since some servers cover their costs with them

source, checked 2026-07-28

on Misskey.io ads are shown in feeds, in the Play section, in search results and in the «explore» selection · the source is dated 2026-05-12

The page was updated on 12 May 2026

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey.io declares its display frequency: one ad per 100 notes

The notesPerOneAd field in the server's machine-readable response

source, checked 2026-07-28

How the money works here

roles let you configure permissions and hand out badges and, in the project's words, help you monetize a server; a role carries a set of policies, is granted manually or automatically by conditions, and when policies conflict priority decides

An engine mechanism that Misskey.io does use

source, checked 2026-07-28

Pricing

Misskey.io rates for private ads (per day, before tax): non-commercial 1200×80 — 100 yen, 1200×250 — 540 yen, 1200×500 — 3,680 yen; direct commerce 1200×80 — 300 yen, 1200×250 — 2,790 yen, 1200×500 — 6,380 yen

The rates for legal entities are loaded by a script and were not read

source, checked 2026-07-28

multipliers on the base price: display priority from 1.0 to 2.0, GIF image 1.2; the placement term is from 3 to 60 days; 10% tax is added to the price

The rate page of the Misskey.io advertising system

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey.io charges for immediate deletion of all data together with backups: 5,000 yen for a full wipe, 10 yen per post, 25 yen per file; manual deletion by the administration is 15 yen per post and 30 yen per file; ordinary deletion of posts, files and the account is free · the source is dated 2026-05-12

The server's terms of 12 May 2026

source, checked 2026-07-28

Limits and restrictions

Misskey.io: the maximum length of a note's text is 3,000 characters

The value is set by a server setting

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey.io: the maximum file size is 524,288,000 bytes (500 MB)

The value is set by a server setting

source, checked 2026-07-28

the drive size on Misskey.io as of May 2026: 1,000 MB in the first day, 2,000 MB up to 30 days, 10,240 MB up to a year, and further by year up to 34,816 MB in the eighth year; for those who support it through pixivFANBOX — 51,200, 102,400, 204,800 and 512,000 MB

The server warns that the values may change without notice

source, checked 2026-07-28

the project warns: the drive should not be treated as cloud storage — any file is available to anyone who knows its address, whether or not it was attached to a note

And in the same place: once published, data is not guaranteed to be deleted from other servers in the federation

source, checked 2026-07-28

when a file is deleted from the drive, everything it was attached to disappears too

The engine's documentation

source, checked 2026-07-28

Restrictions

Misskey.io does not provide services to residents of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Russia, Vietnam and China, because it cannot comply with the requirements of the GDPR and the UK GDPR; Japanese law applies · the source is dated 2026-05-12

The server's terms of 12 May 2026

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey.io's robots file allows crawling of the site by all agents

Checked separately; consistent with the database entry on the absence of llms.txt

source, checked 2026-07-28

Moderation

There is no numerical ladder; the Misskey.io rules list the measures: サイレンス (public posts not allowed), 凍結 — verbatim: «アカウントへのログインが禁止され、一切の機能が使用できなくなります» (our translation: signing in is forbidden and no functions can be used), アカウント削除 (irreversible deletion). Verbatim: «アカウント凍結は不寛容措置がほとんどであり、原則解除は行いません» (our translation: freezing an account is in most cases a zero-tolerance measure and is as a rule not lifted)

The measures are applied at discretion and without notice (the section on violations); this concerns the flagship server Misskey.io

source, checked 2026-08-07

No appeal procedure is described; the rules state outright that a freeze «原則解除は行いません» (our translation: is as a rule not lifted). The 利用規約 of Misskey.io were read — there is no objection form

For self-hosted Misskey servers, moderation is determined by the instance's administrator

source, checked 2026-08-07

API access

the engine has a public API: you can build clients, integrated web services and bots on it; there is a streaming interface for real-time events

The same on every server running Misskey

source, checked 2026-07-28

all requests are made with the POST method, request and response in JSON (except file uploads); a token is issued by hand in the account settings, through MiAuth (from v12.27.0) or through OAuth 2.0 (from v2023.9.0)

No access application is reviewed: development is open by default

source, checked 2026-07-28

built-in automation tools: webhooks, plug-ins and Play — small applications in the AiScript language

The list of features in the engine's documentation

source, checked 2026-07-28

Misskey.io's rules require a bot's owner to set the «bot» label, to name their own account in the description or a pinned note, to filter inappropriate images and turn on the NSFW label, and to limit the frequency of replies; bots with random texts — no more often than once every 30 minutes

A separate line requires you to write to [email protected] in advance if you collect 500 or more records of data a year

source, checked 2026-07-28

Languages

Misskey.io declares its interface languages: Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, French, German

source, checked 2026-07-28

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