head to head · open source
homeland vs symphony
homeland has 3,859 GitHub stars, 1,176 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. symphony has 2,939 stars, 507 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. homeland leads on adoption by 31% (3,859 vs 2,939 stars). homeland is written in Ruby under MIT; symphony is written in Java under AGPL-3.0. homeland has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, symphony 17%. symphony was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (community, 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
| homeland | symphony | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.9K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-08-08 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 507 |
| 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 symphony if
- You want the symphony feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and symphony 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 symphony
Symphony is a community platform implemented in Java under the AGPL 3.0 license. It combines a discussion forum, a Q&A site, a social network with sharing, friends, and games, and blog like publishing in one system. The project lives in the Java ecosystem and is published through the B3log website and official discussion area.
read the full symphony overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is homeland or symphony more popular?
homeland has 3,859 GitHub stars and symphony has 2,939. homeland has the larger community by that measure.
Are homeland and symphony free?
Both are open source. homeland is licensed under MIT and symphony under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between homeland and symphony?
homeland is written in Ruby and symphony 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 symphony?
Choose homeland if you want the larger community (3,859 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose symphony if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.