Is Discourse or NodeBB cheaper?

NodeBB starts at Free, which is lower than Discourse at Free.

Is Discourse open source?

Yes, Discourse is open source (CC-BY-SA-3.0).

Yes, NodeBB is open source (CC-BY-SA-3.0).

A side-by-side comparison of Discourse and NodeBB — pricing, license, deployment, and where each tool wins.

discourse.org

Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS.

nodebb.org

Forum software built for the modern web.

Feature	Discourse	NodeBB
Pricing	Free	Free
Model	Open-source	Open-source
License	CC-BY-SA-3.0	CC-BY-SA-3.0
Deployment	Self-hosted, Cloud	Self-hosted
Category	Communication - Social Networks and Forums	Communication - Social Networks and Forums
Self-hosted	✓Yes	✓Yes
Free tier	✓Yes	✓Yes

8–40hmedium risk

Plan a sprint — 8-40 engineering hours, run in parallel for a week.

Export from Discourse: JSON, CSV

2 things to watch

8–40hmedium risk

Plan a sprint — 8-40 engineering hours, run in parallel for a week.

Export from NodeBB: JSON, CSV

2 things to watch