Discourse
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Discourse is neither a social network nor a forum you can join with an account. It is a forum engine: software you install on your own server or rent together with hosting in order to launch a community of your own. The company describes the product like this: "the customizable, scalable community platform powering over 22,000 communities".
From this follows the main difference from every other platform in this guide. Discourse has no ready-made audience you can plug into, and no rules permitting or forbidding you to advertise: you write the rules yourself, because the community is yours. Promotion changes meaning here — it is not "go out to people" but "build a place people will come to".
The code is open: the company writes that "the entire Discourse codebase is freely available on GitHub. No black boxes, no vendor lock-in", and the repository states the licence as GNU General Public License version 2.0 or later. That means you have a choice: pay the developer for hosting, or install everything yourself and pay nobody.
Who's here
The company gives its own measurements on the home page: more than 22,000 communities, more than 3 million posts a month on the sites it hosts, more than 1 billion page views a month, and individual sites with more than 100 thousand monthly active users.
The audience of any particular Discourse forum is your own, and it is measured with your own tools. The one "shared" resource where you can see a living community around the product itself is meta.discourse.org: it also holds the community guidelines and the documentation we link to below.
Multilingual support is tied to the plan: the comparison table names the number of content translation languages — 2 on the free plan, 4 on Pro, 5 on Business and 10 on Enterprise.
Getting started
Hosting with the developer
The plans are published openly, all prices in US dollars, and the company notes that no card is required up front:
- Free — 2 staff seats, 500 thousand page views a month, 20 thousand emails a month, 10 categories, 5 GB of storage, 100 thousand AI credits a day, 2 translation languages, support only through the public community.
- Pro — $100 a month — 5 staff seats, 500 thousand page views, 100 thousand emails, unlimited categories and tags, 20 GB of storage, 500 thousand AI credits, a custom domain, API and webhook access, more than 15 add-ons.
- Business — $500 a month — 15 seats, 300 thousand emails, 100 GB, 1 million AI credits, advanced reporting and analytics, automation, events, gamification, single sign-on (OpenID and OAuth2), more than 20 additional add-ons, priority support.
- Enterprise — price on request — unlimited seats, from 1 million page views, from 1.5 million emails, from 200 GB, 5 million AI credits, design and development services, a 99.9% availability guarantee, GDPR- and CCPA-compliant hosting, more than 50 add-ons.
Note that "staff seats" means administrators and moderators, while members are unlimited on every plan. The limit to look at first is page views: 500 thousand a month on the three lower plans, and the company clarifies that browser views are counted while requests from bots and search crawlers are not.
Your own server
The hardware requirements are modest. The installation guide names a minimum of 1 GB of RAM (with swap) and 2 GB recommended, 1 core minimum and 2+ recommended, 10 GB of disk minimum and 20 GB+ recommended, 64-bit Linux, preferably Ubuntu LTS. The same page states that installation takes about 10 minutes, of which the build itself is 5–10 minutes, and that for a domain you can take a free subdomain of the form .discourse.diy instead of buying your own. Configuring a mail server during installation is optional — you can leave sign-in through external accounts.
The repository names the software requirements separately: Ruby 3.4+, PostgreSQL 15 and Redis 7.
What you can publish
The engine imposes no content restrictions — the forum owner sets them. The one reference point that ships out of the box is the community guidelines Discourse uses for itself. On advertising they are brief: "Respect our forum. Do not post spam and do not vandalize the forum", and they confine self-promotion to one place: "Job offers are allowed only in the public Marketplace category. Private job offers to other members, unless they have explicitly stated in their profile that they are open to this, are not allowed".
The practical takeaway for someone arriving at someone else's Discourse forum: the wording of the rules will differ on every site, but the technical defences against newcomers are the same — see the next section.
How to grow
Trust levels
Discourse's main built-in mechanism is trust levels. The documentation describes them like this: level 0 "New" — the default for all new members; level 1 "Basic" and level 2 "Member" are granted automatically based on activity; level 3 "Regular" is calculated over a rolling 100-day window; level 4 "Leader" is assigned only manually by staff.
This is the answer to "why did I register and still can't post a link". The documentation calls the trust level system exactly that — a way of "sandboxing" new members — and a newcomer's restrictions (the number of links in a post, the number of embedded media, the number of mentions, the number of topics and replies on the first day) are set by the newuser max links, newuser max embedded media, newuser max mentions per post, max topics in first day and max replies in first day settings, whose values are set by the administrator of the particular site. There is no single number that holds true for every Discourse forum.
If the forum is yours
The engine has no promotion tools of its own: Discourse offers no ad manager, no recommendations and no external feed. Of the built-in features that help with retention and growth, the plans name community summary emails — on all plans, including the free one — as well as advanced reporting and analytics, automation, events and gamification from the Business plan upwards. Search engine optimization is listed by the company among the product's capabilities on the home page.
Path to monetization
Discourse is a software vendor, not a platform that distributes revenue. It pays neither forum owners nor authors of posts: money flows from you to the company (the hosting plan) or does not flow at all (your own server, the GPL 2.0+ licence).
Earning on a forum built with Discourse is your own model: closed categories for paying members, product support, driving traffic. Technically, closed sections are available straight away: unlimited private categories are advertised from the Pro plan upwards, while on the free plan the number of categories is capped at ten. The open pages name no ready-made payment collection mechanism.
Tools and automation
API
There is a programming interface, and it is part of the plans: API and webhook access is advertised from Pro upwards. Keys are created in the admin section, and the documentation describes their structure in detail: a key has a level (a single user or all users) and a scope — global, read-only or granular; for an "all users" key the request must carry an Api-Username header specifying whose name the call is made in.
Two important restrictions from the same source: a key's scope can only narrow permissions, never widen them relative to the user's own rights, and a key unused for 180 days is revoked automatically. The full key is shown once, at creation.
Rate limits
The default values are published: for a user key — 20 requests per minute and 2880 per day; for an admin key — 60 requests per minute, and those are shared across all keys; the per-address limit is 200 requests per minute and 50 per 10 seconds, and for static requests 200 per 10 seconds. On exceeding them the server returns code 429. The shared 60-requests-per-minute limit on admin keys is the detail that trips up synchronization services: it is divided among all the site's keys.
Add-ons and migration
The number of available add-ons is tied to the plan: more than 15 on Pro, more than 20 additional ones on Business, more than 50 on Enterprise. Migration services from other engines cover Vanilla, phpBB, vBulletin, Slack and Drupal on the Business plan; Khoros, Xenforo and Salesforce on Enterprise.
Limits and rules
- Licence. GNU GPL version 2.0 or later — your own server is allowed at no cost, but with the obligations of an open licence.
- Hosting. 500 thousand page views a month on the Free, Pro and Business plans; storage from 5 to 200+ GB; emails from 20 thousand to 1.5 million a month.
- Staff seats. 2 / 5 / 15 / unlimited — administrators and moderators are counted, not members.
- Your own server. 1 GB of memory minimum, 2 GB recommended; 10 GB of disk minimum; Ruby 3.4+, PostgreSQL 15, Redis 7.
- API. 20 requests per minute for a user key, 60 per minute across all admin keys combined, 429 on exceeding; a key is revoked after 180 days of inactivity.
- New members. Restricted by the trust level system; the specific thresholds are the site owner's settings.
- Regulatory compliance. GDPR- and CCPA-compliant hosting is advertised only on the Enterprise plan.
Who it's for
It suits companies that need their own platform for support and discussion: a knowledge base, product feedback, a developer community. The entry barrier is low in both directions — there is a free plan and there is the option of installing everything on your own server with 1 GB of memory.
It suits those who do not want to depend on someone else's rules and algorithms: the content, the domain, the data and the code stay with you, and the company offers migration from other engines as a service.
It does not suit anyone looking for a ready-made audience: there is none here at all, and you will have to bring the traffic yourself. It does not suit fast campaigns — a community is built over months, and the built-in trust levels deliberately slow newcomers down. And it does not suit you if you have no one to moderate: the engine provides tools, not people.
Tools for this platform
The list is built from the tools' own facts: every line is a tool's statement that it supports the platform, with the source named. A tool missing from the list only means we have no such statement.
Automation:
Other tasks:
- Moderation API — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
- Memberful — states support; source, checked 2026-07-28
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself like this: "The customizable, scalable community platform powering over 22,000 communities. Create knowledge through conversation."
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Discourse is not a social network but a forum engine: the software is installed on your own server or rented together with hosting
The community rules are set by the owner of the particular site, not by Discourse
source, checked 2026-07-28
licence: GNU General Public License version 2.0 or later; the code is open on GitHub
The company: "the entire Discourse codebase is freely available on GitHub"
source, checked 2026-07-28
Who's here
the company reports: more than 22,000 communities, more than 3 million posts a month, more than 1 billion page views a month, individual sites with more than 100 thousand monthly active users
A company statement about its own client base, with no date given
source, checked 2026-07-28
Promotion
trust levels: 0 "New" by default, 1 and 2 automatically based on activity, 3 over a rolling 100-day window, 4 only manually by staff
The system is described as a "sandbox" for new members
source, checked 2026-07-28
default thresholds: level 1 — 5 topics, 30 posts read, 10 minutes of reading; level 2 — 20 topics, 100 posts, 60 minutes, visits on 15 days, 1 "like" given and received, replies in 3 topics; level 3 — over 100 days, 25% of recent topics, 25% of posts, 10 replies, 50% of days, 30 likes given and 20 received
Default values; the site administrator can change them
source, checked 2026-07-28
How the money works here
Discourse pays neither forum owners nor authors of posts: money flows from the owner to the company (the hosting plan) or does not flow at all (your own server)
No ready-made mechanism for member subscriptions was found on the pages we checked
source, checked 2026-07-28
Pricing
hosting plans: Free (2 seats, 500 thousand page views, 20 thousand emails, 10 categories, 5 GB), Pro $100/month (5 seats, 100 thousand emails, 20 GB), Business $500/month (15 seats, 300 thousand emails, 100 GB), Enterprise on request (from 1 million page views, from 200 GB)
Prices in US dollars; no card required up front; "seats" are administrators and moderators, members are unlimited
source, checked 2026-07-28
daily AI credits by plan: 100 thousand (Free), 500 thousand (Pro), 1 million (Business), 5 million (Enterprise)
The plan comparison table
source, checked 2026-07-28
Limits and restrictions
requirements for your own server: 1 GB of memory minimum (with swap) and 2 GB recommended, 1 core minimum, 10 GB of disk minimum and 20 GB+ recommended, 64-bit Linux; installation takes about 10 minutes
A domain can be taken as a free subdomain of the form .discourse.diy; configuring SMTP is optional
source, checked 2026-07-28
software requirements: Ruby 3.4+, PostgreSQL 15, Redis 7
The repository README
source, checked 2026-07-28
default limits: a user key — 20 requests per minute and 2880 per day; admin keys — 60 requests per minute across all keys combined; per address — 200 per minute and 50 per 10 seconds; code 429 on exceeding
The shared limit on admin keys is divided among all of the site's keys
source, checked 2026-07-28
Restrictions
a newcomer's restrictions are set by the newuser max links, newuser max embedded media, newuser max mentions per post, max topics in first day and max replies in first day settings; the reference gives no default values
There is no single number that holds for every Discourse forum
source, checked 2026-07-28
the out-of-the-box community guidelines on advertising: "Respect our forum. Do not post spam and do not vandalize the forum"; job offers are allowed only in the public Marketplace category, private offers are forbidden
These are the community guidelines of Discourse itself; every site words its own
source, checked 2026-07-28
Legal
GDPR- and CCPA-compliant hosting is advertised only on the Enterprise plan; the same plan carries a 99.9% availability guarantee
The plan comparison table
source, checked 2026-07-28
API access
API keys have a level (a single user or all users) and a scope (global, read-only, granular); an "all users" key needs an Api-Username header; a key is revoked after 180 days of inactivity
A scope can only narrow permissions relative to the user's own rights; the full key is shown once
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: en
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
number of content translation languages by plan: 2 (Free), 4 (Pro), 5 (Business), 10 (Enterprise)
The number of interface languages is not named on the pages we checked
source, checked 2026-07-28
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