Flarum
Delightfully simple forums. Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun again.
Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.
Commit activity more than 7% of tracked projects; popularity more than 86%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
| Stars | 16k |
|---|---|
| Latest release | v2.0.0-rc.8 · 27 Aug 2026 |
| Repo updated | 27 Aug 2026 |
| Licence | MIT |
| Built with | PHP |
Is Flarum actively maintained?
Development is ongoing. The repository recorded 14 commits over the same window, and the last three months alone account for 8 of them.
Activity is accelerating: the last quarter carried 167% more commits than the one before it.
The most recent tagged release, v2.0.0-rc.8, shipped within the last month — a current, installable version exists today.
Flarum ranks #19 of 40 in Communication - Social Networks and Forums, placing it mid-table for maintenance activity.
What Flarum actually does
Flarum is open-source forum software designed for hosting online community discussions. Written in PHP, it provides a straightforward platform for user-generated threads and replies under an MIT licence. It targets the traditional bulletin board category of web applications.
Best fit: It is a suitable choice if you want to run a lightweight community discussion board using a standard PHP hosting stack.
Worth knowing: Community software in this category often requires ongoing moderation effort and plugin management, and it may overlap heavily with larger, more established alternatives.
Deployment notes
You will typically need to provision a compatible PHP environment alongside a relational database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, sitting behind a standard web server configured with TLS.
Links
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