Is Community Garage free?

Yes — Community Garage is included with all AutoBrain plans (free, Enthusiast, Garage) and works on self-hosted deployments too.

How does federation work?

Each AutoBrain instance runs its own Community Garage feed. When you follow someone on another instance, their posts appear in your feed — like ActivityPub/Mastodon but built for car content.

Community Garage — Now Live

Q: What is Community Garage?

A social layer for AutoBrain where you can share builds, photos and mod lists across a federated feed. Your data stays on your server — it's not a centralized social platform.

What is Community Garage?

Your vehicles, your mods, your photos — now shareable with a community of owners, without handing over your data.

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Build posts

Publish a build with car photos, specs and a full mod list — pulled straight from the data you already track in AutoBrain.

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Cross-instance social

See builds from other AutoBrain instances that opt in to the community. One feed, many servers.

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Shareable build links

Share any build with a link that works across instances — viewable no matter which server the viewer is on.

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Comments & likes

Like and comment on builds from other owners. Interaction stays tied to the build's home server.

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Data stays local

Federated, not centralised. Your photos, vehicles and mods stay in your instance's database. You opt in per build and choose exactly what to share — nothing is public by default.

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A premium feature

Community Garage is part of AutoBrain's paid plans — Enthusiast and Garage (already priced on Stripe). Local social stays free on every server; federation is included free with AutoBrain-hosted plans and is a $20/yr add-on for self-hosted servers.

Built on a privacy-first model

✅ Opt-in sharing. You decide whether each build is shared, and what's in it — photos, make and model, mod list, and optionally odometer and notes.
✅ Data stays on your server. The community hub routes posts between instances — it never stores your photos or your data.
✅ Your admin stays in control. Servers can keep social entirely local or opt out of federation, and can disable the feature altogether.
✅ Moderation by design. Rate limits, reporting and block lists keep the feed usable.

Community Garage Issues Blog

Community Garage Issues Blog: get help from real owners.

A blog-style help board inside Community Garage. Post a problem, search past issues, and get answers from owners who've been there — an old-school forum feel for the modern garage.

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Post your problem

Engine won't start, rattle at 60km/h — describe it with your vehicle context and let the community weigh in.

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Searchable archive

Browse past issues by tag and keyword — the fix someone else already found might be yours too.

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Help from real owners

Threaded answers from people who've driven the same problems. Mark the answer that worked and close it out.

Step into the garage

Community Garage is live. Open it from your AutoBrain-hosted account to share your build and follow the feed. Self-hosting? Join the federation for $20/yr.

Open Community Garage

Read the full story in the launch announcement, or see everything else AutoBrain does on the features page.