head to head · open source
Flarum vs bbs-go
Flarum has 16,400 GitHub stars, 1,668 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. bbs-go has 3,478 stars, 701 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 24 days ago. Flarum leads on adoption by 372% (16,400 vs 3,478 stars). Flarum is written in PHP under MIT; bbs-go is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. Flarum has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, bbs-go 20%. Flarum 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
| Flarum | bbs-go | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-08-27 | 2026-08-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 701 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Flarum if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bbs-go if
- You want the bbs-go feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and bbs-go fits your workflow better
About Flarum
Flarum is an open source forum software project for building and running online community discussions on a website. It is positioned as a simple discussion platform with a fast interface and a PHP based application, and it is distributed under the MIT License. It lives in the PHP web application ecosystem, and its topics include forum, Laravel, and PHP.
read the full Flarum overview →
About bbs-go
bbs go is a lightweight community and Q&A platform for forums, knowledge bases, and discussions. It lives in the self hosted community platform ecosystem, combining questions, posts, articles, comments, votes, tags, and nodes. The project is offered under the GPL 3.0 license, and its topics include golang, react, forum, qna, community, and discussion.
read the full bbs-go overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Flarum or bbs-go more popular?
Flarum has 16,400 GitHub stars and bbs-go has 3,478. Flarum has the larger community by that measure.
Are Flarum and bbs-go free?
Both are open source. Flarum is licensed under MIT and bbs-go under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Flarum and bbs-go?
Flarum is written in PHP and bbs-go in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Flarum or bbs-go?
Choose Flarum if you want the larger community (16,400 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose bbs-go if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.