Self-hosted Forums & Discussion Boards tools

Discourse is open-source forum software for community discussion, support, and knowledge sharing, with moderation tools, customization, and built-in chat.

GPL-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Flarum Cloud+11

Lila is the open source server behind lichess.org, providing real-time chess, puzzles, analysis, tournaments, teams, and community features via web and mobile clients.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Chess.com

Lightweight, extensible forum platform built in PHP with a Mithril.js frontend, supporting MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/SQLite and an active extensions ecosystem.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Flarum Cloud+8

Apache Answer is an open-source Q&A platform for community forums, help centers, and internal knowledge sharing with tagging, voting, and a plugin system.

Apache-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Stack Overflow+5

NodeBB is a modern forum platform with real-time discussions, built-in chat, SSO options, plugins, and flexible theming, backed by Redis, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Discourse+14

Lemmy is a federated, self-hostable link aggregator and forum platform for creating Reddit-like communities with voting, comments, moderation tools, and ActivityPub federation.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Reddit+3

Open-source intranet and enterprise social network for communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing with a modular, extensible design.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Microsoft Yammer+13

Misago is a modern, fast forum application built with Python, Django, and React, featuring moderation tools, permissions, private threads, polls, and API integrations.

GPL-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Discourse+12

Loomio is a collaborative decision-making tool for group discussions, proposals, and polls, helping teams make transparent decisions asynchronously with a clear record.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Diligent Boards+16

phpBB is an open-source forum (bulletin board) platform in PHP for building and managing community discussion boards with extensible theming and add-ons.

GPL-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Discourse+8

RetroShare is a decentralized friend-to-friend platform for encrypted chat, mail, forums, channels and secure file sharing, with optional Tor/I2P support.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Telegram+19

Open-source multiplayer modification and engine for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that adds synchronized networking, Lua scripting, resource-based content, and a server browser.

Self-hostable community discussion platform combining Q&A, forums, team chat, ideation/upvoting, and Disqus-style embedded blog comments.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Stack Overflow+19

Elgg is a modular open source platform for building social networks and collaborative communities with plugin-based extensions.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Facebook+12

MyBB is a PHP-based, open-source forum platform with plugins, themes, moderation tools, private messaging and multi-database support.

LGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

XenForo Cloud+13

Open source Stack Overflow clone for teams: Q&A, knowledge sharing, search, spaces, reputation, webhooks, and integrations via a Para backend.

Apache-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Stack Overflow+18

Open-source PHP forum software supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite with a modular package system and rich moderation features.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Discourse+8

Posio is a multiplayer geography game with real-time WebSocket rounds, map-based guessing, and multiple game modes built on Django, GeoDjango, and Channels.

Modern Node.js-based BBS server with Telnet/SSH/WebSocket access, theming and mods, message networks, file areas, doors, and strong authentication options.

BSD-2-ClauseActively maintained

Alternative to:

Discourse+14

Mbin is a federated content aggregator offering voting, discussion and microblogging via ActivityPub. A community-focused fork of kbin, built with PHP and Symfony.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Reddit+19

A modern forum, wiki, and community hub for discussions, curated lists, and knowledgebases. Extensible, secure platform built with TypeScript and Go.

MPL-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Discourse+14

Lurker is a self-hosted, read-only Reddit client with a mobile-first UI, minimal JavaScript, sqlite storage and account/invite subscription management.

MITSlowing down

Alternative to:

Reddit+2

A compact, privacy-minded read-only frontend for Reddit with mobile-friendly UI, RSS support, and easy self-hosting using Python and ASGI.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Reddit+2

AsmBB is a lightweight, assembly-language web forum engine that runs via FastCGI and stores data in SQLite, designed for Linux servers and high performance.

Activity unknown

Alternative to:

Discourse+6

Open source ActivityPub-powered federated forum and link aggregator for running and joining community discussions across the Fediverse.

Activity unknown

Alternative to:

Reddit+17