NodeBB vs WriteFreely
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 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 WriteFreely with
choose an app… Hugo Astro Gatsby Ghost Mastodon Discourse Halo Invidious Eleventy Zola Lemmy diaspora* Nitter Element Quartz Misskey Piped Fizzy Pixelfed Flarum HumHub Elk LibReddit Campsite Campfire Redlib Mixpost Pro Vanilla Forums Misago Nikola Loomio Artalk pump.io Plume Pleroma Microblog.pub Marmite ActivityPub for WordPress Chyrp Lite Akkoma Socialhome Mataroa Wafrn GoBlog PageCord Forte
Feature NodeBB WriteFreely Category Social Networks Social Networks License GPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language JavaScript Go Setup difficulty Medium Easy Min. RAM 1,024 MB 256 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, binary, source GitHub stars ★ 15,182 ★ 5,216 First released 2013 2018 Replaces phpBB, Discourse Medium, Tumblr
Why pick each one
Choose NodeBB if… Snappy real-time UI Flexible database options NodeBB details
Frequently asked questions Is NodeBB or WriteFreely better? Neither is universally better. NodeBB has the larger community, while WriteFreely is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are NodeBB and WriteFreely free and open-source? Yes. NodeBB is licensed under GPL-3.0 and WriteFreely under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run NodeBB and WriteFreely with Docker? NodeBB: yes. WriteFreely: yes.