The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.

Community Count Community Subscriber Count
beehaw.org 6 133450
hexbear.net 33 663204
lemdro.id 1 17052
lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 15907
lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 53006
lemmy.ml 14 356460
lemmy.one 1 16257
lemmy.world 39 851950
lemmynsfw.com 2 33586
sh.itjust.works 1 16006
sopuli.xyz 1 14093

The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as “suspicious”)

EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:

Community Count Community Active Month Count
awful.systems 1 2616
feddit.org 2 7363
feddit.uk 2 5289
hexbear.net 1 2952
lemdro.id 1 2898
lemm.ee 3 8898
lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 11422
lemmy.ca 3 14910
lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 13752
lemmy.ml 10 54949
lemmy.world 57 338384
lemmy.wtf 1 3602
lemmy.zip 3 12020
mander.xyz 1 11469
sh.itjust.works 5 37365
slrpnk.net 3 10897
sopuli.xyz 2 10070
ttrpg.network 1 4107

Community Count:

Community Users:

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]
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      3 months ago

      Games is the largest games com by far in terms of posts and comments (150k comments and 15k post vs 71k comments and 3k posts on lemmy world…

      News has most posts than any other news and about as many comments as lemmyworld.

      Politics has the most posts of any politics coms, but far less comments than lemmyworld’s.

      History basically has no competitors (150k comments vs 7k for the next largest)

      Movies also has no competitors (75k comments vs 9k for the next largest).

      Videos has 56k comments vs lemmyworld’s 13k

      Music has 45k comments vs lemmyworld’s 6k

      Urbanism has 44k comments vs fuckcar’s 19k

      Granted, given Hexbear has been around for 4 years, the number of comments/posts is largely a side effect of age. But it also means calling them duplicates is probably misleading. OTOH, the main trans community there has been very active recently, dwarfing all other trans communities combined.

      • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        They are more “community” than the ex-redditor secluded island that is most of the others instances, that’s definitely the side effect of age.

        • WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 months ago

          Hexbear (if you disagree with their politics) is basically like a white american from the deep south. They’re perfectly reasonable to talk to as long as it isn’t politics