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PunBB

Fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board

Forums & Community ★ 201 stars Easy setup GPL-2.0

PunBB is a lightweight PHP discussion board that emphasizes speed and simplicity over an extensive feature set. It produces standards-compliant, fast-loading pages.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Minimal and fast
  • Standards-compliant output
  • Low resource usage
  • Simple administration

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Written in PHP
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM

Trade-offs

  • Very basic feature set
  • Limited active development

Is PunBB secure?

OSV.dev has no published security advisories for PunBB's repository. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

PunBB replaces

Self-hosted phpBB alternatives

Health badge

Maintain PunBB? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 8 · at risk

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[![SelfHostIndex health score for PunBB](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/forums-punbb.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/forums-punbb/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/forums-punbb/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/forums-punbb.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for PunBB"></a>
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.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/forums-punbb.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for PunBB
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/forums-punbb/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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