NodeBB vs Pleroma
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 Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk WriteFreely LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago FlaskBB Loomio Laravel.io Artalk pump.io Plume 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 Pleroma with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped WriteFreely pump.io Friendica Firefish Bridgy Fed Takahe Microblog.pub Fedify snac Hometown Glitch-soc Sharkey ActivityPub for WordPress Chyrp Lite Hollo Ktistec Akkoma Honk Socialhome Epicyon Iceshrimp Wafrn Forte
Feature NodeBB Pleroma Category Social Networks Social Networks License GPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language JavaScript Elixir Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 1,024 MB 512 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 15,182 ★ 2,200 First released 2013 2017 Replaces phpBB, Discourse Twitter, Tumblr
Why pick each one
Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details Choose Pleroma if… Runs on small servers Compatible with Mastodon apps Pleroma details
Frequently asked questions Is NodeBB or Pleroma 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 NodeBB and Pleroma free and open-source? Yes. NodeBB is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Pleroma under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run NodeBB and Pleroma with Docker? NodeBB: yes. Pleroma: yes.