Mataroa Alternative: The Same Values, a Wider Shape

Mataroa is a naked, sincere blogging platform: open source, run by one person, almost no chrome. ULTRV shares the spirit — no tracking, no growth hacks, the writing is the point — and this page is not going to manufacture a disagreement that does not exist. The two differ on scope, on open source, and on whether a blog should be allowed to look like anything.

It is worth saying how small Mataroa is, because it is a point in its favour rather than against it. Mataroa publishes its own numbers: 200+ premium subscribers, over $100/month in revenue against roughly €40/month in costs (mataroa.blog, checked August 2026). That is a project that covers its bills and is not looking for a growth curve, which is exactly the kind of thing the small webshould have more of.

Where Mataroa is stronger

• AGPL-licensed and genuinely self-hostable — you can read every line that serves your blog
• Cookie-free, backend-based analytics, which is more than ULTRV gives you (ULTRV gives you nothing)
• Email delivery: readers can subscribe by email, and premium users can post by email
• Export as EPUB, or as Zola and Hugo source files, plus monthly automatic exports emailed to you
• $9/year for everything, which is less than ULTRV's paid plan costs in two months
• A clear, argued position against bloat that it actually holds to, including refusing features people ask for

If you want the smallest possible blogging platform whose code you could read on a train journey, Mataroa is excellent and this comparison is probably not for you.

Self-hosting and open source

This is the honest core of the comparison, so it goes near the top rather than buried in a footnote. Mataroa is free software under the AGPL. ULTRV is not. Only theterminal clientis open source; the platform itself is a hosted service you do not get the source to, and there is no self-hosted edition planned.

What that costs you is real. With Mataroa you can audit the code, fork it if the maintainer stops, and run your own instance on a small VPS with the deployment docs in the README. With ULTRV you are trusting a small team not to change the deal. The mitigations are structural rather than legal: no investors and no growth targets, afree tier and one $5/month plan, a documented REST API, and an export that produces plain HTML, images, and feeds you can host anywhere without ULTRV existing. That is a weaker guarantee than a licence. If the licence is what you need, use Mataroa; we would rather say that than talk around it.

What ULTRV adds

• A custom domain without the upgrade.Mataroa treats custom domains as a premium feature, so a domain you already own costs $9/year to point at your blog. On ULTRV it is included on the free tier, SSL and all.
• Eighty-four themes.Mataroa is styleless on purpose and does not support custom CSS. ULTRV has 84 themes — Brutalist, GeoCities, Synthwave, Tufte, Bauhaus and the rest — on the view that a blog looking like itself is part of the point.
• A rich editor, or Markdown.Markdown works here too, but nothing requires it. Some people want to write, not remember syntax, and that should not disqualify them from a small blog.
• Tags, and a feed per tag.Mataroa has decided against tags. ULTRV has them, and every tag gets its own RSS, Atom, and JSON feed, so a reader can follow one subject instead of everything.
• Typed pages.Albums, recipe collections, bookshelves, guestbooks, and now pages are first-class page types with their own URLs and layouts, not posts pretending to be something else.
• A terminal client, and importers.Both platforms have an HTTP API; only ULTRV ships a full TUI written in Rust. ULTRV also imports fromWordPress,Substack,Ghost,Medium, andbulk Markdown. The full list is on the features page.

Mataroa suits you if

• Open source matters for the platform itself, not only for the client
• You want the option to self-host, now or if the project ever stops
• The absence of themes is a feature — one less decision between you and the text
• You want an email list for readers, or want to post by sending an email
• $9/year is the shape of spending you had in mind

ULTRV suits you if

• You share Mataroa's values but want a custom domain without paying for it
• You want the blog to have a look, and 84 of them to choose between
• Tags, per-tag feeds, and typed pages are things you would actually use
• A rich editor is welcome, and Markdown optional rather than mandatory
• Publishing from a terminal appeals more than reading the source does

Frequently asked questions