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  • Flarum or Discourse - Better Open Source Forum Software?

    Steven Way

    Steven Way

    @stevenway
    Updated: Oct 27, 2025
    Views: 111

    I’ve been testing Discourse and Flarum for a new community project for a local group. Both are solid open source forum platforms, but take different approaches to community building.

    Discourse Vs. Flarum

    Discourse or Flarum is really a choice between a heavy, enterprise-ready stack and a lightweight, modern one. Discourse runs on Ruby on Rails, uses PosgreSQL and Redis for cache management. Most community builders deploy it with Docker. Which means, it adds an extra layer of technical complexity for regular users.

    Flarum is built with PHP with a Laravel-like backend, is easier to install, lighter and faster for smaller team.

    Discourse has added new features like AI and Chat tools; but it relies on plugins for most of its functions like SSO. It does have a good set of moderation tools as well. On the other hand, Flarum features a simple UI and offers a self-hosting plan. The drawback - both software requires the host to take care of bandwidth, security, emails and more.

    SEO, Performance and Themes

    Flarum feels faster on smaller servers but Discourse performs nicely with better hardware. Discourse SEO is strong because of structured data; but I’m not sure about Flarum SEO.

    Customization is easy for Flarum and Discourse seems to require PHD.

    Overall - I’m leaning towards Flarum; but open to suggestions. Jatra will always remain our top choice as a forum software; but the new pricing tiers make it beyond our budget for small community.

    We’ll begin working on the community in January 2026.

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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • 2w

    First of all - thank you for your trust in Jatra. We are on a mission to make the best community platform. Discourse, Flarum and Jatra have their own unique advantages. But let's focus on Discourse and Flarum for now.

    Discourse or Flarum - the choice depends on the kind of community you wish to build, your budgets, technical expertise and the outcome you expect.

    Both are open source platforms and have been in development for a long time. Discourse started much earlier and has an established user-base. Flarum's original developer has left, but the software is actively developed and maintained by a dedicated team.

    I'd put both Flarum and Discourse at the same level when it comes to SEO and performance. Both platforms can handle small and large communities - provided you provision a good hardware underneath. Ruby on Rails as well as PHP will perform well - but it's mostly a result of the hardware that powers.

    Since forum hosting and server management are difficult, time and resources consuming - we decided to offer only hosted version of Jatra. We take care of everything - servers, updates, upgrades, bandwidth, DDoS attacks, security patches, backups - so that our community managers focus on what matters: community building.

    In general, I'd pick Flarum over Discourse because of its simplicity and UX. I've found Discourse too complicated to use as an admin. Flarum is simpler and gets the job done.

  • Steven Way

    @stevenway • 2w

    I think we'll go with Flarum. Also, requesting a Flarum -> Jatra importer so that we can migrate to Jatra after we've reached 100 members.

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