#138
B
Rank #166
Pixelfed
Pixelfed is a federated, Instagram-style photo sharing platform built on ActivityPub. Its standout trait is giving users an ad-free, algorithm-free alternative that interoperates with the wider Fediverse.
64.5
/ 100
⚙ Full Stack
A Laravel (PHP) application backed by MySQL/PostgreSQL, Redis for queues/caching, and a horizon-style job queue for processing federation and media transcoding tasks.
📈 Scaling Analysis
The Laravel app tier scales horizontally in front of a shared DB, but ActivityPub federation introduces significant background job load (inbox/outbox delivery, media fetch) that requires dedicated queue workers to scale independently of the web tier as follower counts grow.
🚀 Running on Nexlayer
Deploy as a PHP-FPM/nginx pod, a MySQL or Postgres pod, and a Redis pod, wired with <podName>.pod:<port>; queue workers should run as a separate pod for federation/media jobs. Media storage benefits from S3-compatible object storage rather than local volumes for durability.