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Discourse

The default for serious community forums

provisional — pending verificationGPL-2.0self-hostable

Value Index

3.8 / 5

Transparency5

Value density4

Privacy4

Efficiency2

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Why it's listed

Discourse is listed in forums & community because it competes on utility: the default for serious community forums. It's built by an independent, bootstrapped team — no growth-at-all-costs pressure, no ad-tax passed to you. Licensed GPL-2.0; pricing: free (ce) / paid cloud. It's on the heavier side for its category — we score that honestly and say so. This entry is provisional — the scores are seeded estimates pending our full manual rubric pass, and the verification date will appear here once complete.

Facts

License: GPL-2.0
Pricing: Free (CE) / paid cloud
Funding model: Bootstrapped OSS company
Self-hostable: Yes — deploy difficulty: hard
Verification: Provisional — scores are seeded estimates pending manual verification

Evidence notes

Rails; needs 2GB+

Spotted a problem — trackers added, dark patterns, abandonment? Report a violation. Scores change when evidence does.