head to head · open source
Flarum vs Valour
Flarum has 16,400 GitHub stars, 1,668 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. Valour has 397 stars, 39 forks, 88 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Flarum leads on adoption by 4,031% (16,400 vs 397 stars). Flarum is written in PHP under MIT; Valour is written in C# under AGPL-3.0. Flarum has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Valour 10%. Valour was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Valour | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 397 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | C# |
| Last push | 2026-08-27 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 39 |
| 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 Valour if
- You want the Valour feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and Valour 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 Valour
Valour is an open source community platform written in C and .NET with a Blazor client, licensed AGPL 3.0, intended for people who want to run or join social communities — called planets — on infrastructure they control rather than on a vendor's servers.
read the full Valour overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Flarum or Valour more popular?
Flarum has 16,400 GitHub stars and Valour has 397. Flarum has the larger community by that measure.
Are Flarum and Valour free?
Both are open source. Flarum is licensed under MIT and Valour under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Flarum and Valour?
Flarum is written in PHP and Valour in C#. 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 Valour?
Choose Flarum if you want the larger community (16,400 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Valour if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.