Learn how Discourse and Flarum differ in their key features, development activity, technology stack and community adoption, so you can decide which of these community building platforms is best for you.

Discourse appears to have several advantages over Flarum, particularly in popularity, growth, activity and maturity. Consider your specific needs regarding popularity, growth, activity, technology, maturity, licensing and features when making your decision.
Discourse leads in popularity with 47,650 stars vs 16,370 stars for Flarum. The 191% higher star count indicates stronger community adoption. In terms of developer contributions, Discourse has 8,983 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.
Discourse is growing faster, adding 180 stars in the last 30 days (+0.4%) against adding 19 stars for Flarum (+0.1%). Discourse is both larger and pulling further ahead.
Discourse shows more recent development activity with its last commit 4 hours ago, while Flarum was last updated 1 month ago. This suggests Discourse is being more actively maintained.
Discourse uses JavaScript, CSS, Typescript, SCSS, Ruby while Flarum leverages PHP.
Discourse has been in development longer, starting 14 years ago, compared to Flarum which began 12 years ago. This 2.0-year head start suggests Discourse may have more mature features and established processes.
Flarum uses the MIT license, which is more permissive than Discourse's GPL-2.0 license, potentially offering greater flexibility for commercial use and integration.
Both tools serve similar use cases in Community Building Platforms, Forum Software.
Both Discourse and Flarum offer self-hosting capabilities, giving you full control over your data and infrastructure.

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