head to head · open source
Discourse vs answer
Discourse has 47,852 GitHub stars, 9,017 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. answer has 15,680 stars, 1,368 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Discourse leads on adoption by 205% (47,852 vs 15,680 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 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
Discourse is a free, open source community discussion platform, built in Ruby on Rails and licensed under GPL 2.0, for organisations and communities that want complete control over how and where their forum is run rather than renting a hosted service.
read the full Discourse overview →
About answer
Apache Answer is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go and React question and answer platform that teams of any size can run as a community forum, help center, or knowledge management system, and it is aimed at organisations that want their own Q&A site rather than a hosted one.
read the full answer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Discourse or answer more popular?
Discourse has 47,852 GitHub stars and answer has 15,680. 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 (47,852 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.