head to head · open source
Discourse vs homeland
Discourse has 48,046 GitHub stars, 9,058 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. homeland has 3,859 stars, 1,176 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Discourse leads on adoption by 1,145% (48,046 vs 3,859 stars). Discourse is written in Ruby under GPL-2.0; homeland is written in Ruby under MIT. Discourse has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, homeland 30%. Discourse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (forum, rails), 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 | homeland | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 homeland if
- You want the homeland feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and homeland 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 homeland
Open source discussion website. 开源的论坛／社区网站系统，基于 Ruby China 发展而来。 Usage DEPLOYMENT GUIDE EXAMPLE RELEASE NOTES CONTRIBUTE GUIDE License Released under the MIT license: www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT
read the full homeland overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Discourse or homeland more popular?
Discourse has 48,046 GitHub stars and homeland has 3,859. Discourse has the larger community by that measure.
Are Discourse and homeland free?
Both are open source. Discourse is licensed under GPL-2.0 and homeland under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Discourse and homeland?
Discourse is written in Ruby and homeland in Ruby. 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 homeland?
Choose Discourse if you want the larger community (48,046 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose homeland if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.