Element vs Flarum
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 Element with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed 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
Compare Flarum with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious NodeBB Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago FlaskBB Loomio Laravel.io Artalk pump.io phpBB esoTalk MyBB SMF django-machina YAF.NET FluxBB JForum lemmyBB PunBB ElkArte Discourse-compatible Antville FUDforum Phorum bbPress Discuz! X
Feature Element Flarum Category Social Networks Social Networks License free MIT Language TypeScript PHP Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, one-click docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 13,353 ★ 6,739 First released 2022 2015 Replaces — phpBB, vBulletin
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 Choose Flarum if… Fast and clean interface Easy to extend Flarum details
Frequently asked questions Is Element or Flarum better? Element is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Flarum if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Element and Flarum free and open-source? Yes. Element is licensed under free and Flarum under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Element and Flarum with Docker? Element: yes. Flarum: yes.