head to head · open source
Flarum vs answer
Flarum has 16,400 GitHub stars, 1,668 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. answer has 15,680 stars, 1,368 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Flarum leads on adoption by 5% (16,400 vs 15,680 stars). Flarum is written in PHP under MIT; answer is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Flarum has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, answer 9%. answer 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Flarum | answer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-27 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 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 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 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 →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Community Platforms projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Community Platforms field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Flarum or answer more popular?
Flarum has 16,400 GitHub stars and answer has 15,680. Flarum has the larger community by that measure.
Are Flarum and answer free?
Both are open source. Flarum is licensed under MIT and answer under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Flarum and answer?
Flarum is written in PHP 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, Flarum or answer?
Choose Flarum if you want the larger community (16,400 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose answer if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.