What is Discourse used for?

Discourse is an open-source community discussion platform with topics, built-in chat, themes and plugins, available to self-host or through official hosting. It is a good fit for community forums and support communities, product feedback and discussion boards, and open-source project discussion.

Is Discourse open source?

Yes. Discourse is open source under the GPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at discourse/discourse and is written mainly in Ruby.

Yes. Discourse is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $100 per month.

Can I self-host Discourse?

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

What is Discourse an alternative to?

Discourse is an open-source alternative to Reddit, Disqus, Circle and Mighty Networks. Other open-source alternatives to Reddit include NodeBB and Forem.

Is Discourse actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Discourse was on 2 October 2026. The project has 48k stars on GitHub.

Discourse: open-source alternative to Reddit, Disqus, Circle

About Discourse

Discourse is a fully open-source platform for online community discussion. It is aimed at those who prefer to decide for themselves how and where their site runs, and it is written mainly in Ruby on Rails with a JavaScript front end and PostgreSQL. It is released under the GPL-2.0 license.

Discourse lets you start discussion topics, talk live through its integrated chat, change the look with official and community themes, and extend the site with plugins, ranging from chatbots powered by Discourse AI to the Data Explorer plugin for SQL analysis. Current stable versions of the major browsers are supported across desktops, tablets and phones.

You can self-host it on your own infrastructure by following the install guide, or choose the official Discourse hosting if you would rather skip setup and server management. Development setups use Docker or a VS Code dev container and need Ruby, PostgreSQL and Redis. It suits companies, open-source projects and groups running forums and support communities.

Key features

Threaded discussion topics
Built-in real-time chat
Official and community themes
Plugins including Discourse AI and Data Explorer
Self-hosting or official hosting
Works on all major browsers and devices

Good fit for

→Community forums and support communities
→Product feedback and discussion boards
→Open-source project discussion

Built with: Ruby; JavaScript; Rails; PostgreSQL
Tags: forum; community; discussion; self-hosted; ruby; rails; chat; plugins

Discourse: questions and answers

What is Discourse used for?: Discourse is an open-source community discussion platform with topics, built-in chat, themes and plugins, available to self-host or through official hosting. It is a good fit for community forums and support communities, product feedback and discussion boards, and open-source project discussion.
Is Discourse open source?: Yes. Discourse is open source under the GPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at discourse/discourse and is written mainly in Ruby.
Is Discourse free?: Yes. Discourse is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $100 per month.
Can I self-host Discourse?: Yes. Discourse can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Discourse an alternative to?: Discourse is an open-source alternative to Reddit, Disqus, Circle and Mighty Networks. Other open-source alternatives to Reddit include NodeBB and Forem.
Is Discourse actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Discourse was on 2 October 2026. The project has 48k stars on GitHub.