Campfire vs NodeBB
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted social networks options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Campfire with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Loomio Artalk pump.io
Compare NodeBB with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Forem Invidious Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Spectrum Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago FlaskBB Loomio Laravel.io Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Endurain Manyfold phpBB Talkyard Elgg Friendica Mobilizon Phanpy esoTalk Firefish OSSN MyBB Bridgy Fed Takahe Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc SMF Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy django-machina kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress YAF.NET Smithereen Postmarks FluxBB Mastodon Bird UI Wavelog Hollo Gathio Loops Snikket Ktistec Libremdb Mbin Trustroots Akkoma Gancio Honk Socialhome Hubzilla Epicyon Iceshrimp mlmym Wafrn GoBlog Hatsu BuddyPress Sphinx Relay JForum noStrudel Mitra lemmyBB PunBB ElkArte Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Discourse-compatible Antville FUDforum Sublinks Buddycloud Phorum Zap bbPress Nostr Relay Squeaknode Khatru Pyramid Catodon Route96 Discuz! X Osada usocial Tesseract AsmBB Bloat Forte GoToSocial Iceshrimp.NET Masto-FE (🦥 flavour) PeerTube search-index Snort yarn.social
Feature Campfire NodeBB Category Social Networks Social Networks License free GPL-3.0 Language Ruby JavaScript Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 1,024 MB Deployment docker, one-click docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 4,471 ★ 15,182 First released 2022 2013 Replaces — phpBB, Discourse
Why pick each one
Choose Campfire if… Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment One-click install on common self-host platforms Active community (4.5k GitHub stars) Campfire details Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details
Frequently asked questions Is Campfire or NodeBB better? Neither is universally better. NodeBB has the larger community, while Campfire is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Campfire and NodeBB free and open-source? Yes. Campfire is licensed under free and NodeBB under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Campfire and NodeBB with Docker? Campfire: yes. NodeBB: yes.