Is Discourse free to use?

Yes, Discourse is open source under the GPL-2.0 license. You can use, modify, and distribute it freely within the terms of the license.

Can I self-host Discourse?

Yes, Discourse can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure, giving you full control over your data and deployment.

What does Discourse replace?

Discourse is an open source alternative to Orbit. It provides similar functionality while being free and community-driven.

How popular is Discourse?

Discourse has 46.9k stars on GitHub, indicating a strong and active community of users and contributors.

Discourse

Featured

Open source community discussion platform

GPL-2.0Self-hostableRubyJavaScriptEmber.js

forumcommunitydiscussionmoderation

Website GitHub Docs

Last updated: yesterday

46.9k

Stars

8.9k

Forks

371

Contributors

Apr 2026

Last Commit

Project Health

92/ 100

Excellent

Replaces These Proprietary Tools

Discourse can be used as an alternative to these commercial products.

Orbit

Community growth platform for devrel

freemium

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Crowd.dev

Open source community management platform

3.4kApache-2.0Self-hostable

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