The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.
| beehaw.org | hexbear.net | lemdro.id | lemmy.blahaj.zone | lemmy.dbzer0.com | lemmy.ml | lemmy.one | lemmy.world | lemmynsfw.com | sh.itjust.works | sopuli.xyz | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community Count | 6 | 33 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 14 | 1 | 39 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Community Subscriber Count | 133450 | 663204 | 17052 | 15907 | 53006 | 356460 | 16257 | 851950 | 33586 | 16006 | 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:
| awful.systems | feddit.org | feddit.uk | hexbear.net | lemdro.id | lemm.ee | lemmy.blahaj.zone | lemmy.ca | lemmy.dbzer0.com | lemmy.ml | lemmy.world | lemmy.wtf | lemmy.zip | mander.xyz | sh.itjust.works | slrpnk.net | sopuli.xyz | ttrpg.network | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community Count | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 57 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Community Active Month Count | 2616 | 7363 | 5289 | 2952 | 2898 | 8898 | 11422 | 14910 | 13752 | 54949 | 338384 | 3602 | 12020 | 11469 | 37365 | 10897 | 10070 | 4107 |
Community Count:
Community Users:
There's a bit of choice paralasys when joining Lemmy. Even if you know how the fediverse works you won't have knowledge of the culture and relationships of different instances.
I joined Lemmy.world because it advertises itself as the vanilla flavour of the fediverse, so it makes it an easy pick for someone like me who didn't quite understand how it all hangs together.
But I do agree with you, and I'm looking to migrate after some concerning things have come up about the lemmy.world owner.
The choice paralysis is real. I chose lemm.ee because it was easy to type into the address bar, and I've stuck around because the admin seems pretty level-headed.
I agree on the choice paralysis. I ended up with Feddit.it because my native language is Italian and that's the biggest instance in my language.
Lemm.ee should fit your bill