NodeBB vs Piped
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 NodeBB with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Forem Invidious Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Spectrum 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 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
Compare Piped with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious PeerTube Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Tube Archivist Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely Pinchflat LibReddit MediaCMS 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 Damselfly Web 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 Tube yarn.social
Feature NodeBB Piped Category Social Networks Social Networks License GPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0-or-later Language JavaScript Vue Setup difficulty Medium Easy Min. RAM 1,024 MB 50 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 15,182 ★ 10,168 First released 2013 2024 Replaces phpBB, Discourse YouTube
Why pick each one
Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details Choose Piped if… Released under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly Mature project with 10.2k GitHub stars Written in Vue Piped details
Frequently asked questions Is NodeBB or Piped better? Neither is universally better. NodeBB has the larger community, while Piped is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are NodeBB and Piped free and open-source? Yes. NodeBB is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Piped under AGPL-3.0-or-later. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run NodeBB and Piped with Docker? NodeBB: yes. Piped: check the project docs for container support.