Open source forum projects
Every project in the registry tagged forum, ranked by real GitHub adoption.
Cultivate vibrant online communities with ease
Modern forum software for vibrant online communities
A Q&A platform software for teams at any scales. Whether it's a community forum, help center, or knowledge management platform, you can always count on Apache A
A scalable social community platform powered by Gin backend and modern TypeScript/Vue frontend architecture
:circus_tent: An open source forum/community system based on Rails, developed based on Ruby China.
A lightweight community and Q&A platform for forums, knowledge bases, and discussions.一个轻量级社区和问答平台。
🎶 一款用 Java 实现的现代化社区（论坛/问答/BBS/社交网络/博客）系统平台。A modern community (forum/Q&A/BBS/SNS/blog) system platform implemented in Java. https://ld246.com
Misago is fully featured modern forum application that is fast, scalable and responsive.
🐳 The CUTEST visualnovel / galgame forum! Built with Nuxt4, GO Fiber and PostgreSQL. Kun Visual Novel forum 6th generation! 开源, 免费, 零门槛, 最先进的 Galgame 论坛社区!
A community discussion platform: Brings together the main features from StackOverflow, Slack, Discourse, Reddit, and Disqus blog comments.
The Stack Overflow clone for your team (self-hosted or hosted)
Lightweight alternative to Discourse written in Nim
NamelessMC is a free, easy to use & powerful website software for your Minecraft server, which includes a large range of features.
Jivejdon is a chain notebook with DDD/CQRS/Clean architecture
Build lasting communities with modern forum technology
Related tags
Frequently asked questions
How many open source forum projects are there?
This registry tracks 15 projects tagged forum, with 104,560 GitHub stars between them. The most-adopted is Discourse at 47,852 stars.
Are these forum projects free to use?
Yes — 15 of the 15 carry an explicit open-source licence across 6 distinct licences, so there is no licence fee. Where a project also sells a hosted or enterprise version, the self-hosted path remains free.
Which forum project should I choose?
The list above is ranked by GitHub stars, but stars measure attention rather than fit. Check three things on each card: the licence (permissive versus copyleft), the language it is written in, and the last-push date — a high-star project that has not been pushed in a year is a liability.
Are these forum projects still maintained?
15 of the 15 were pushed in the last 90 days, and every card shows its exact last-push date so you can see the rest. Sort your shortlist by that date before committing to a migration.