head to head · open source
Flarum vs homeland
Flarum has 16,441 GitHub stars, 1,676 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. homeland has 3,859 stars, 1,176 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Flarum leads on adoption by 326% (16,441 vs 3,859 stars). Flarum is written in PHP under MIT; homeland is written in Ruby under MIT. Flarum has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, homeland 30%. 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 | homeland | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-10-09 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 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 Flarum
About Flarum Flarum is a delightfully simple discussion platform for your website. It's fast and easy to use, with all the features you need to run a successful community. It is designed to be: Fast and simple. No clutter, no bloat, no complex dependencies. Flarum is built with PHP so it’s quick and easy to deploy. The interface is powered by Mithril, a performant JavaScript framework with a tiny footprint. Beautiful and responsive. This is forum software for humans. Flarum is carefully designed to be consistent and intuitive across platforms, out of the box. Powerful and extensible. Customize, extend, and…
read the full Flarum 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 Flarum or homeland more popular?
Flarum has 16,441 GitHub stars and homeland has 3,859. Flarum has the larger community by that measure.
Are Flarum and homeland free?
Both are open source. Flarum is licensed under MIT and homeland under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Flarum and homeland?
Flarum is written in PHP 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, Flarum or homeland?
Choose Flarum if you want the larger community (16,441 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose homeland if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.