NodeBB vs Soapbox
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 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 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 Soapbox with
choose an app… Mastodon Discourse Invidious Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Misskey Piped Elk
Feature NodeBB Soapbox Category Social Networks Social Networks License GPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language JavaScript TypeScript Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 1,024 MB 128 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source bare-metal, source GitHub stars ★ 15,182 ★ 700 First released 2013 2020 Replaces phpBB, Discourse Twitter app
Why pick each one
Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details Choose Soapbox if… Released under the AGPL-3.0 license Written in TypeScript Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM Soapbox details
Frequently asked questions Is NodeBB or Soapbox 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 Soapbox free and open-source? Yes. NodeBB is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Soapbox under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run NodeBB and Soapbox with Docker? NodeBB: yes. Soapbox: check the project docs for container support.