discourse.org

Discourse

Who runs Discourse, what it tracks and what it costs, and the 20 closest community forum software alternatives.

Who’s behind it
Not stated
Online since
Unknown
Trackers
Prices
No pricing page
Last price change
–
Closest alternative
Flarum

Measured from Discourse’s own pages, the Internet Archive and public records. Hover a dotted value for its source and date.

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01 · Who’s behind it

Who runs Discourse

Discourse discourse.org

Discourse is the customizable, scalable community platform powering more than 22,000 communities that create knowledge through conversation.

Wikidata: open source Internet forum software application

Company
No imprint we could read
Online since
Not in the Internet Archive
Audience
In English

02 · Privacy

What Discourse tracks

What the homepage loads before you accept or decline cookies. A cookie banner should hold most of it back until you agree, and a tag manager can load more that we don’t see.

trackers that follow visitors

10 of the 15 alternatives below have fewer, 2 have more.

Privacy-friendly alternatives →
Cookie banner
None found
US company
2 tools
  • Marketing and email tracking

    Links visits to email campaigns and customer profiles.

  • Tag manager

    Loads further tracking scripts, which we can’t always see.

03 · Alternatives

Alternatives to Discourse

Thumbs up if it’s a real alternative to Discourse, thumbs down if it isn’t.

Fewer trackers than DiscourseNo ad trackersRegistered in the EUFree planOnly in English
  1. 01
    Flarum flarum.org English 1 tracker

    The extensible community framework - Flarum

    Free, open-source forum software built by the community. Beautiful, fast, and extensible — made for communities of all sizes.

    Compare Flarum with Discourse →
  2. 02
    Invision Community invisioncommunity.com

    forum software written in PHP

    Compare Invision Community with Discourse →
  3. 03
    Circle circle.so English 2 trackers

    Circle | The complete community platform

    Build a home for your community, events, and courses — all under your own brand.

    Compare Circle with Discourse →
  4. 04
    MyBB mybb.com No trackers

    MyBB - Free and Open Source Forum Software

    The official homepage for MyBB, a free and open source PHP forum software.

    Compare MyBB with Discourse →
  5. 05
    XenForo xenforo.com

    Internet forum software

    Compare XenForo with Discourse →
  6. 06
    Ning ning.com Top 10K

    online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks

    Compare Ning with Discourse →
  7. 07
    phpBB phpbb.com Top 10K English

    open-source Internet forum package written in PHP

    Compare phpBB with Discourse →
  8. 08
    Heartbeat heartbeat.chat English 6 trackers

    Online Community Platform for Creators & Coaches | Heartbeat

    The online community platform for creators and coaches. Run memberships, courses, events and payments in one place you own. 37,000+ communities built.

    Compare Heartbeat with Discourse →
  9. 09
    Bitrix24 bitrix24.com Top 10K German 1 tracker

    Bitrix24 ist ein kostenfreier Online-Arbeitsplatz für Ihr Unternehmen: CRM, Aufgaben, Online-Termine und vieles mehr.

    Die All-in-One Lösung von Bitrix24 hilft Ihnen dabei, Ihre Teams zu verwalten und den Vertrieb voranzutreiben. Bitrix24 lässt sich hervorragend in Ihre Geschäftsprozesse integrieren und sorgt für deren hochgenaue und effiziente Verwaltung.

    Compare Bitrix24 with Discourse →
  10. 10
    WordPress wordpress.org Top 100 English 1 tracker

    Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS | WordPress.org

    Open source software which you can use to easily create a beautiful website, blog, or app.

    Compare WordPress with Discourse →
  11. 11
    Odoo odoo.com Top 1K English No trackers

    Open Source ERP and CRM | Odoo

    From ERP to CRM, eCommerce and CMS. Download Odoo or use it in the cloud. Grow Your Business.

    Compare Odoo with Discourse →
  12. 12
    Nextcloud nextcloud.com Top 10K English 1 tracker

    Nextcloud - Open source content collaboration platform

    The most popular open source content collaboration platform for tens of millions of users at thousands of organizations across the globe

    Compare Nextcloud with Discourse →
  13. 13
    HubSpot hubspot.com Top 1K English 1 tracker

    HubSpot | Software & Tools for your Business - Homepage

    HubSpot's customer platform includes all the marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software you need to grow your business.

    Compare HubSpot with Discourse →
  14. 14
    Ionos ionos.com Top 10K English 1 tracker

    IONOS » Hosting Provider | Websites. Domains. Server.

    IONOS, your digital partner for cloud solutions and web hosting, supporting your needs from websites, domains, servers, and more.

    Compare Ionos with Discourse →
  15. 15
    Kajabi kajabi.com

    California-based SaaS technology company that develops a platform for creators and entrepreneurs to create, market and sell digital content

    Compare Kajabi with Discourse →
  16. 16
    Ghost ghost.org Top 10K English No trackers

    Ghost: The best open source blog & newsletter platform

    Beautiful, modern publishing with email newsletters and paid subscriptions built-in. Used by Platformer, 404Media, Lever News, Tangle, The Browser, and thousands more.

    Compare Ghost with Discourse →
  17. 17
    Mattermost mattermost.com English 3 trackers

    Mattermost | Operational and AI Sovereignty for Critical Infrastructure and National Security

    Zero-trust collaboration, automation and AI in private cloud, self-hosted, and air-gapped environments. Built for national security, critical infrastructure, and regulated enterprises.

    Compare Mattermost with Discourse →
  18. 18
    Front front.com English 2 trackers

    Front | Customer service platform, powered by AI

    Deliver exceptional service with Front, the platform where support, sales, operations, and AI agents come together to resolve complex customer work.

    Compare Front with Discourse →
  19. 19
    Appwrite appwrite.io English No trackers

    Appwrite · The open-source cloud for developers and agents

    Appwrite is an open-source developer platform with Auth, Databases, Storage, Functions, Messaging, and Sites. The open-source cloud for agents and developers.

    Compare Appwrite with Discourse →
  20. 20
    Archbee archbee.com English 2 trackers

    Archbee — The First Knowledge Portal Platform

    Build beautiful knowledge portals that are easy to navigate, search, share and contribute to: user guides, API docs, knowledge bases and SOPs in one platform.

    Compare Archbee with Discourse →

Closest first, by how much each site’s offer resembles Discourse’s. Trackers are counted the same way as above. Highlighted technologies are ones Discourse uses too. Votes and comments come from visitors and don’t change the order.

04 · History

No changes yet. Each new crawl is compared with the last one, and what Discourse adds, drops or rewrites shows up here.

05 · Details

How we measure

Alternatives are matched by what sites actually offer, from their homepages, Wikidata and a summary by Claude, in any language. Trackers and the rest of the stack come from the homepage’s code and DNS records.

The full technology stack, the competitor map and search numbers · 9 technologies
Neighbours
k = 20
Sites searched
9,192
Vector
384-d
Query
27 ms

Competitor map

Each alternative by how close its vector is to Discourse’s (x) and how much traffic it gets, how much of the stack it shares, or where it sits in the embedding space itself (y). Hover for the numbers, click to jump to it in the list.

similarity × popularity

OdooWordPressBitrix24phpBBNingXenForoMyBBCircleInvision CommunityFlarum

Built with

JavaScript libraries
  • GSAP asset https://www.discourse.org/a/js/gsap.min.js?v=20261026164621
Tag managers
Marketing automation
  • HubSpot page source: js-eu1.hs-scripts.com
CDN
  • Amazon CloudFront header x-amz-cf-id: YBlGYcp28tW1oQ3ADMu0G8jije-9YAlvjV1xjK8r0XDs8oFkHCvyVw==
Hosting
Email hosting
Email delivery
  • Amazon SES TXT v=spf1 include:metal._spf.discoursemail.com include:_spf.google.com i…
DNS hosting
SaaS tools (verified in DNS)