head to head · open source
Discourse vs paopao-ce
Discourse has 48,046 GitHub stars, 9,058 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. paopao-ce has 4,501 stars, 648 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Discourse leads on adoption by 967% (48,046 vs 4,501 stars). Discourse is written in Ruby under GPL-2.0; paopao-ce is written in Go under MIT. Discourse has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, paopao-ce 14%. 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 | paopao-ce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 4.5K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 648 |
| 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 paopao-ce if
- You want the paopao-ce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and paopao-ce 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 paopao-ce
PaoPao An open source micro community platform built with Go and Vue. Designed for self hosted social products, community experiments, and customizable deployments. 简体中文 · Live Demo · Pull Requests · Project Notes Overview PaoPao is a full stack, open source micro community system. It combines a Go backend, a Vue 3 web client, and an optional Tauri desktop application, with a modular feature system for storage, search, logging, observability, and deployment strategy. The repository is suitable for teams or individuals who want to run a community product, evaluate an extensible social platform, or build on top of…
read the full paopao-ce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Discourse or paopao-ce more popular?
Discourse has 48,046 GitHub stars and paopao-ce has 4,501. Discourse has the larger community by that measure.
Are Discourse and paopao-ce free?
Both are open source. Discourse is licensed under GPL-2.0 and paopao-ce under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Discourse and paopao-ce?
Discourse is written in Ruby and paopao-ce 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 paopao-ce?
Choose Discourse if you want the larger community (48,046 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose paopao-ce if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.