Tools & keys · Communities

Lemmy setup

Reddit-style communities across the fediverse.

No key needed
Updated
Free tier
Public search, no key needed.
checked September 2026
Larvabot's cap
Nothing to cap: rate limits just hand the job to the next provider.
Fallback position
#6 of 8 for conversations. See the order

What it does

Lemmy is open-source, federated forum software. Searching one large instance finds posts from every community it federates with.

  • Searching federated communities for people asking for what you built

Get set up

  1. Nothing required. Optionally set Lemmy instance in Settings → Conversations (default lemmy.world)
Open join-lemmy.org

Where it goes

In the dashboard, open Settings and find the Conversations (optional keys) section. Secret values are encrypted before they're saved and only their last four characters are ever shown again.

Settings → Conversations (optional keys)
Lemmy instance
LEMMY_INSTANCE

Default lemmy.world; it searches every federated community it knows.

…

Staying free

Nothing to meter. Larvabot runs a handful of searches per check.

How the quota guard works →

Fallback order

For conversations, Larvabot tries these in order and skips any that aren't set up, are out of free quota or are busy.

  1. 1Hacker News search (Algolia)
  2. 2Stack Exchange API
  3. 3YouTube comments (Data API)
  4. 4GitHub issues & discussions
  5. 5Bluesky search
  6. 6Lemmy (federated communities)
  7. 7Discourse forums
  8. 8Web discussions (your search keys)

More communities tools

Keep going