Discourse is an open-source forum platform, free to self-host or hosted from $100/month. Compare Discourse pricing, features, pros, cons, and alternatives.
Discourse is an open-source community discussion and forum platform built by Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., founded in 2013 by Jeff Atwood (co-founder of Stack Overflow), Robin Ward, and Sam Saffron. Headquartered in El Cerrito, California, and operated as a fully remote company, Discourse combines a modern, chat-like real-time interface with the structure of a traditional threaded forum.
The platform is free and open source under a GPL-family license, self-hostable via Docker, and also available as managed hosting through tiered SaaS plans generating the company's primary revenue.
Discourse organizes discussions into categories and tags, uses trust levels and gamification to build community reputation, and added native real-time Chat in 2023 alongside its traditional threaded discussions. SSO via OAuth2, OpenID, and SAML supports enterprise identity integration.
An extensive plugin and theme ecosystem, full API and webhook access, and the first-party Discourse AI plugin suite (summarization, sentiment analysis, smart replies, AI moderation) round out the platform's extensibility.
Self-hosting Discourse is entirely free since the software is open source; organizations only pay for their own server infrastructure. Managed hosting starts with a limited free tier, then Pro at $100/month, Business at $500/month, and a custom-priced Enterprise tier.
Each hosted tier raises limits on monthly page views, storage, emails, staff seats, and AI feature credits, with Business and Enterprise adding advanced automation, SSO, more plugins, and priority support.
Yes, Discourse is free and open source to self-host. Managed hosting plans start with a limited free tier and paid plans from $100/month.
Discourse was founded in 2013 by Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, along with Robin Ward and Sam Saffron.
Discourse is released under a GPL-family open-source license, with source code freely available.
Yes. Discourse officially supports free self-hosting via Docker, giving organizations full control over infrastructure and data.
Yes. Discourse supports SSO via OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and SAML, available on Business and Enterprise hosted plans or configurable when self-hosted.
Discourse AI is a first-party plugin suite that adds AI-powered summarization, sentiment analysis, smart replies, and moderation assistance to a Discourse community.