Mbin 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 Mbin with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Forem Invidious Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Lobsters Tildes PieFed kbin Discuit Lemmy-UI Alternative Photon mlmym lemmyBB Lemmy-Easy-Deploy Sublinks Throat Tesseract
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 Loops Snikket Ktistec Libremdb 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 Mbin NodeBB Category Social Networks Social Networks License AGPL-3.0 GPL-3.0 Language PHP JavaScript Setup difficulty Hard Medium Min. RAM 1,024 MB 1,024 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 426 ★ 15,182 First released 2023 2013 Replaces Reddit phpBB, Discourse
Why pick each one
Choose Mbin if… Active community fork Regular releases Mbin details Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details
Frequently asked questions Is Mbin or NodeBB better? NodeBB is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Mbin if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Mbin and NodeBB free and open-source? Yes. Mbin is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and NodeBB under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Mbin and NodeBB with Docker? Mbin: yes. NodeBB: yes.