I too would like a better account of the servers out there. In the end, I was able to get an account with this instance: https://exquisite.tube/
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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I believe that the fediverse.observer site can list any Fediverse instance type by number of users (though not active users).
checks
Oh, they do do active users.
https://peertube.fediverse.observer/list
Looks like the top one is phijkchu.com, at 8074 active users.
EDIT: There's also fedidb.com:
Choose "PeerTube" as server type, and they'll give you some data on instances too.
EDIT2: Note that another way to explore PeerTube, which may be to your taste, is that Google Video indexes PeerTube servers, though I don't know of a way to restrict it to only PeerTube servers aside from using something like site:phijkchu.com to restrict the search on an instance-by-instance basis. But if you search and it's on PeerTube, and Google has indexed it, it should come up there.
Kagi also indexes videos, and lets lets one restrict the search by source of videos, with "PeerTube" being one.
EDIT3: Adding "peertube" as a search term on Google Video isn't ideal, but it did result in videos on PeerTube hosts at the top, so maybe that could be kind of an ad-hoc way of searching on Google Video.
EDIT4: libera.site doesn't appear to provide sortability, but it does list a video count per instance, as well as a bunch of other graphed data. Never seen it before now, though.
I've always liked peertube.wtf.
Tilvids is fun as well.
You probably should not use number of users or amount of content as the deciding factor (that leads to centralization, remember the entire point of federation is to DE-centralize), that said...
The instance list does allow sorting by number of users or number of videos, phijkchu.com has the most users and Videovortex has the most videos.
I think a better way to decide on an instance is reliability.
What is the instance, where is it based, who runs it. I don't mean to completely dox people but they should provide some meaningful background info to legitimate themselves.
Personally I wouldn't trust instances run by individuals unless I knew the people personally and I could talk to them. Otherwise you will always run the risk of leaving your content in the hands of someone who may or may not want to continue running their instance.
Is it run by a single individual, a group or an organization? I'd rather trust a group or organization and the more info they gave about themselves and their team and messaging the better. A group or organization is less likely to fall apart if any one person decides to quit.
A well organized group who know how to raise and maintain funds will also be less likely to fail.
And the user themselves have to make themselves responsible as well. Once you find a reliable instance that you like .... give them money, support them, donate to them. The whole system needs money to operate and the people who make it work should be paid for their time and effort. If we all paid a little for every little bit of the fediverse we use, the more reliable and stable it will all become. The little bit we pay to every little instance we use will mean that it will be less likely to devolve back into a monolithic centralized corporation that controls everything all over again.
You probably should not use number of users or amount of content as the deciding factor (that leads to centralization, remember the entire point of federation is to DE-centralize), that said…
The instance list does allow sorting by number of users or number of videos, phijkchu.com has the most users and Videovortex has the most videos.
Wow, you made me think! P.S.: I’m still new here on the Fediverse.
doesn’t allow filtering by number of users or amount of content
It does though?
https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalUsers https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalLocalVideos
PeerTube seems to have fucked up by being too quick to reject people. Not exactly the best strategy for growth.
Who has peer tube rejected?
A literal nazi party in Sweden runs a PeerTube instance using "peertube" in the domain name. Who has "PeerTube" (do you mean Framasoft?) rejected?
(Note: The above does not mean Framasoft supports the nazis, just so that my comment doesn't come off in the wrong way here)