What is Decidim used for?

Decidim is a free, open-source participatory democracy framework for citizens, organizations and public institutions, built with Ruby on Rails. It is a good fit for city governments running citizen participation, and associations and cooperatives with democratic governance.

Is Decidim open source?

Yes. Decidim is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at decidim/decidim and is written mainly in Ruby.

Yes. Decidim is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Decidim?

Yes. Decidim can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What are some alternatives to Decidim?

Similar open-source tools in the Forums & Communities category include Forem, Discourse and Lobsters. SaaS products in the same category include BuddyBoss, Invision Community and vBulletin.

Is Decidim actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Decidim was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.32.1, published on 30 July 2026. The project has 1.8k stars on GitHub.

Decidim: open-source forums & communities

About Decidim

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework made of a generator and multiple gems built with Ruby on Rails. It is a digital platform for citizen participation that helps citizens, organizations and public institutions self-organize democratically at any scale. The code is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and project topics link it to civic tech, govtech and digital public goods.

The website lists features including strategic planning, participatory processes, assemblies, initiatives and citizen consultations, participatory budgeting and networked communication. It emphasizes transparency, traceability and integrity of information, along with security, privacy and confidentiality for participants. The project also publishes modules and documentation, and the Metadecidim community shapes its direction.

Decidim describes itself as a social contract: free software and open, collaborative content that anyone may use, share and improve. The site offers a demo, case studies and a list of installations in use, and it is available in many interface languages. It is aimed at governments, associations and cooperatives that want to run their own participation platform.

Key features

Participatory processes and assemblies
Citizen initiatives and consultations
Participatory budgeting
Strategic planning tools
Modular architecture with extra modules
Many interface languages

Good fit for

→City governments running citizen participation
→Associations and cooperatives with democratic governance

Built with: Ruby
Tags: participatory-democracy; civic-tech; govtech; citizen-participation; ruby; rails; self-hosted; digital-public-goods

Decidim: questions and answers

What is Decidim used for?: Decidim is a free, open-source participatory democracy framework for citizens, organizations and public institutions, built with Ruby on Rails. It is a good fit for city governments running citizen participation, and associations and cooperatives with democratic governance.
Is Decidim open source?: Yes. Decidim is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at decidim/decidim and is written mainly in Ruby.
Is Decidim free?: Yes. Decidim is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Decidim?: Yes. Decidim can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What are some alternatives to Decidim?: Similar open-source tools in the Forums & Communities category include Forem, Discourse and Lobsters. SaaS products in the same category include BuddyBoss, Invision Community and vBulletin.
Is Decidim actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Decidim was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.32.1, published on 30 July 2026. The project has 1.8k stars on GitHub.