Loops 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 Loops with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious PeerTube Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Tube Archivist Pixelfed Pinchflat MediaCMS Damselfly Web Friendiqa Hub Peachpub Tube
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 Campfire 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 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 Loops NodeBB Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0-or-later GPL-3.0 Language PHP JavaScript Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 350 MB 1,024 MB Deployment bare-metal docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 437 ★ 15,182 First released 2025 2013 Replaces Instagram, TikTok, YouTube phpBB, Discourse
Why pick each one
Choose Loops if… Released under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license Written in PHP Lightweight — runs in 350 MB RAM Loops details Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details
Frequently asked questions Is Loops or NodeBB better? Neither is universally better. NodeBB has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Loops and NodeBB free and open-source? Yes. Loops is licensed under AGPL-3.0-or-later and NodeBB under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Loops and NodeBB with Docker? Loops: check the project docs for container support. NodeBB: yes.