head to head · open source
homeland vs scoold
homeland has 3,859 GitHub stars, 1,176 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. scoold has 923 stars, 227 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. homeland leads on adoption by 318% (3,859 vs 923 stars). homeland is written in Ruby under MIT; scoold is written in Java under Apache-2.0. homeland has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, scoold 25%. scoold 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
| homeland | scoold | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.9K | ★ 923 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-08-08 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 227 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick homeland if
- You weight community size — 3.9K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick scoold if
- You want the scoold feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and scoold fits your workflow better
About homeland
Homeland is an open source forum and community system written in Ruby and built on Ruby on Rails. It is described as an open source discussion website, and its tagline says that it was developed based on Ruby China. That places it in the community platform category, where the main purpose is to operate a discussion website.
read the full homeland overview →
About scoold
Scoold is an Apache 2.0 licensed, self hostable Q&A and knowledge sharing platform for teams and organizations that want a Stack Overflow style space for internal questions and answers.
read the full scoold 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 homeland or scoold more popular?
homeland has 3,859 GitHub stars and scoold has 923. homeland has the larger community by that measure.
Are homeland and scoold free?
Both are open source. homeland is licensed under MIT and scoold under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between homeland and scoold?
homeland is written in Ruby and scoold in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, homeland or scoold?
Choose homeland if you want the larger community (3,859 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose scoold if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.