Discourse vs Mastodon
Both are self-hosted communication - social networks and forums projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.
| Discourse | Mastodon | |
|---|---|---|
| Health score | 91/100 | 93/100 |
| Commits (11 mo) | 6522 | 2554 |
| Commits (last 3 mo) | 1940 | 727 |
| Stars | 48k | 50k |
| Latest release | 15 Jul 2026 | 15 Sept 2026 |
| Licence | GPL-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Built with | Docker | Ruby |
| Typical RAM | 2 GB | 2 GB |
Discourse
Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS.
High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.
Commit activity more than 98% of tracked projects; popularity more than 97%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
Mastodon
Federated microblogging server.
High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.
Commit activity more than 92% of tracked projects; popularity more than 97%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
How to read this
Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.
What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.
See every option in this category: self-hosted communication - social networks and forums.