head to head · open source
Discourse vs answer
Discourse has 48,046 GitHub stars, 9,058 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. answer has 15,708 stars, 1,382 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. Discourse leads on adoption by 206% (48,046 vs 15,708 stars). Discourse is written in Ruby under GPL-2.0; answer is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Discourse has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, answer 9%. Discourse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (forum), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Discourse | answer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 16K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Discourse if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick answer if
- You want the answer feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and answer fits your workflow better
About Discourse
The online home for your community. You can self host Discourse on your own infrastructure. But if you'd rather skip the setup, maintenance, and server management, we offer official Discourse hosting. 👉 Learn more about Discourse hosting Discourse is a 100% open source community platform for those who want complete control over how and where their site is run. Our platform has been battle tested for over a decade and continues to evolve to meet users’ needs for a powerful community platform. With Discourse, you can: 💬 Create discussion topics to foster meaningful conversations. ⚡️ Connect in real time with…
read the full Discourse overview →
About answer
Apache Answer Build Q&A platform A Q&A platform software for teams at any scales. Whether it’s a community forum, help center, or knowledge management platform, you can always count on Answer. To learn more about the project, visit answer.apache.org. Screenshots Quick start Running with docker For more information, see Installation. Plugins Answer provides a plugin system for developers to create custom plugins and expand Answer’s features. You can find the plugin documentation here. We value your feedback and suggestions to improve our documentation. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to…
read the full answer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Discourse or answer more popular?
Discourse has 48,046 GitHub stars and answer has 15,708. Discourse has the larger community by that measure.
Are Discourse and answer free?
Both are open source. Discourse is licensed under GPL-2.0 and answer under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Discourse and answer?
Discourse is written in Ruby and answer in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Discourse or answer?
Choose Discourse if you want the larger community (48,046 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose answer if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.