Discourse vs Element
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 Discourse with
choose an app… Mastodon Forem Invidious NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Lobsters Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago FlaskBB Loomio Laravel.io Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Endurain Manyfold phpBB Elgg Friendica Mobilizon Phanpy esoTalk Firefish OSSN MyBB Bridgy Fed Takahe Fedify Tildes snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc SMF Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy django-machina PieFed kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress YAF.NET Smithereen Discuit Postmarks Lemmy-UI Alternative Photon 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 Lemmy-Easy-Deploy Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Discourse-compatible Antville FUDforum Sublinks Throat 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
Compare Element with
choose an app… Mastodon Invidious NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Loomio Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Endurain Manyfold phpBB Elgg Friendica Mobilizon Phanpy Firefish OSSN Bridgy Fed Takahe Fedify snac NeoDB webmention.io Bridgy Hometown Glitch-soc Soapbox Enigma 1/2 BBS Chirpy kbin Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Smithereen Postmarks 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 noStrudel Mitra lemmyBB Friendiqa Hub Fedibird MeshChatX Streams Enafore Sublinks Buddycloud Zap Nostr Relay Squeaknode Khatru Pyramid Catodon Route96 Osada usocial Tesseract AsmBB Bloat Forte GoToSocial Iceshrimp.NET Masto-FE (🦥 flavour) PeerTube search-index Snort yarn.social
Feature Discourse Element Category Social Networks Social Networks License GPL-2.0 free Language Ruby TypeScript Setup difficulty Medium Easy Min. RAM 2,048 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, source docker, one-click GitHub stars ★ 47,619 ★ 13,353 First released 2013 2022 Replaces phpBB, Reddit —
Why pick each one
Choose Element if… Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment One-click install on common self-host platforms Mature project with 13.4k GitHub stars Element details
Frequently asked questions Is Discourse or Element better? Neither is universally better. Discourse has the larger community, while Element is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Discourse and Element free and open-source? Yes. Discourse is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Element under free. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Discourse and Element with Docker? Discourse: yes. Element: yes.