Discourse
Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS.
- Social & Forums
- Ruby
- GPL-2.0
- Docker
- Actively maintained
GitHub stats
- GitHub stars
- 47,933
- Forks
- 9,030
- Open issues
- 0
- Commits, last 12 months
- 6,794
- Last commit
- Oct 6, 2026
- Latest release
- _gh-attach-assetsJul 15, 2026
- Created
- Jan 12, 2013
Data from the GitHub API, refreshed daily.
About Discourse
Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS. Discourse is open source under the GPL-2.0 license and written mainly in Ruby, so you can read the code, run it on your own hardware and keep full control of your data.
The project has 47,933 stars and 9,030 forks on GitHub, with 6,794 commits over the last year. It ships a Docker image, which makes it a good fit for a small VPS or a home server running Docker Compose.
Topics
- discourse
- javascript
- rails
- ruby
- ember
- forum
- postgresql
Open-source alternative to
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What is Discourse?
Discourse is a free, open-source app you can host on your own server, listed in our Social & Forums category. Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS. The source code lives at github.com/discourse/discourse, where it has 47,933 stars.
Is Discourse free and open source?
Yes. Discourse is open-source software released under the GPL-2.0 license, so you can self-host it at no cost. You only pay for the server it runs on, and some projects also offer an optional paid cloud plan.
Can I run Discourse with Docker?
Yes. Discourse provides a Docker image, so you can run it on any Linux server with Docker and Docker Compose installed. The project README lists the image name and the environment variables to set.
What are the best alternatives to Discourse?
Popular open-source alternatives to Discourse include Mastodon, Flarum and Answer. Discourse itself is a self-hosted alternative to Reddit.
Is Discourse actively maintained?
The most recent commit to Discourse was on Oct 6, 2026 with 6,794 commits in the past twelve months. The latest release is _gh-attach-assets, published Jul 15, 2026. Check the open issues on GitHub to gauge how quickly maintainers respond.