Discourse vs Flarum
A side-by-side comparison of Discourse and Flarum on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
1 of the 8 capabilities tracked on both differs.
| Measure | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Free, then $100/mo | Free |
| Charged per | The workspace | Not published |
| AI billed at | AI credit allowance, no rate published | Not published |
| Included, where the other says no | 1 capability | 0 capabilities |
Capability by capability
1 of the 8 capabilities tracked on both products differs.
Channels
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedEmail-in and email-out on every plan including Free. Volume is the gate: 20k emails a month on Free, 100k on Pro, 300k on Business, "1.5M+" on Enterprise. | IncludedEmail digests are named alongside in-browser notifications as the built-in engagement channel, with real-time websocket updates available as an extension. | |
| Live chat | Not published | NoNo chat channel in core. Real-time websocket extensions exist for live updating discussions, which is not the same as a support chat widget. |
| Community forum | IncludedEvery plan including Free and the self-hosted edition. It is the product, not a channel bolted onto a help desk. | IncludedThe whole product. Groups and permissions with per-category access control, built-in moderation and flagging, a choice of Markdown or WYSIWYG editors, in-browser notifications and email digests. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | Not published | NoNo inbox, no ticket and no agent workspace. Flarum is a discussion forum and nothing else. |
| Ticket queues | Not published | NoNo ticket object, queue, assignment or SLA. |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow builder | IncludedPublished as "Automation". Business and above, alongside events, gamification and the data explorer. | Not published |
AI resolution
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | NoDiscourse AI does spam detection and content translation. Nothing on the pricing or integrations pages claims an agent that resolves a customer request, and the terms disclaim the automated tooling as "inherently probabilistic". | NoNo AI of any kind in core, and no AI pricing surface, because there is nothing to price. |
AI assist
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Translation | IncludedAI content translation, gated by language count rather than by feature: 2 languages on Free, 4 on Pro, 5 on Business, 10 on Enterprise. It consumes the daily AI credit allowance. | Not published |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | Not published | NoNo knowledge base, article model or versioning. A forum thread is not a documented article, which is the practical difference when a support team is choosing where answers should live. |
| Custom domain | IncludedPro and above. Free sites run on a yourname.discourse.group subdomain. | IncludedSelf-hosted, so the domain is whatever the operator points at the server. Nothing to buy and nothing to unlock. |
Reporting
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| Custom reports | IncludedBusiness and above, published as advanced reporting and analytics plus the data explorer. Free and Pro get neither. | Not published |
| Raw data export | IncludedEvery plan including Free. A single .tar.gz or .sql.gz backup of the whole site database, and a contractual obligation rather than a plan feature. | IncludedDirect database access rather than an export feature. Posts, users, groups and extension tables live in the operator's own MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite or PostgreSQL instance. |
Enterprise
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedEnterprise only, as a plugin. SSO over OpenID and OAuth2 arrives one tier earlier at Business, and DiscourseConnect SSO at Pro. | Not publishedNot core, and not established. Flarum ships a deliberately minimal core where "most of the features that ship with Flarum are actually extensions", and authentication beyond the built-in accounts is left to the community package ecosystem. Whether a given SSO extension exists, is maintained and supports Flarum 2.x has to be checked package by package. |
| Role-based access control | Not published | Included"Assign permissions to groups, control member access across categories, and keep things tidy with built-in moderation and flagging." Group-based permissions are core rather than an extension, and there is no tier that withholds them. |
| HIPAA / BAA | NoContractually excluded. The customer agrees not to bring data subject to Special Data Regulations, which name HIPAA, into the forum. No BAA is offered. | Not published |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNo plan gate stated. "You can review our Privacy Policy and access our SOC 2 report". Type I or II is not stated. Applies to CDCK hosting only. | NoNot a gap in the software, a category error. Certification attaches to whoever operates a service, and here that is the customer. No SOC 2, ISO 27001 or any other attestation exists or can exist for a project that runs nothing, and any compliance claim about a Flarum forum is a claim about the operator's own hosting. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated for ordinary personal data: a Data Processing Addendum is published and incorporated by reference, with an EU Digital Services Act contact. GDPR special-category data is separately excluded by contract. "GDPR & CCPA compliant hosting" is listed as an Enterprise line. | Not published |
| Data residency | IncludedSet on the Signup Form rather than by plan. Most hosted forums sit in CDCK data centres and AWS S3 in the United States; some sit in Canada and the European Union. Self-hosting decides it outright. | IncludedAbsolute, by construction: the data is wherever the operator puts the server. No region list, no plan gate and no vendor to ask, which is a stronger position than any hosted competitor in this category can offer and comes with correspondingly more responsibility. |
| Data retention policy | IncludedWritten into the contract, not configurable by plan: downloads stay available for thirty days after the agreement ends, and CDCK deletes its copies within thirty days after that obligation ends. | Not published |
Developer
| Capability | Discourse | Flarum |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedPro and above. "Anything you can do in Discourse you can also do with its API." The Free plan has no API access. | IncludedAn API exists and is the basis of the extension model: "Build your own, or commission custom development — the API makes it possible." It is a developer surface for building against the application rather than a documented integration endpoint with a published reference of the kind hosted vendors publish. |
| Webhooks | IncludedPro and above, alongside API access. Webhooks are what carries the IFTTT bridge to hundreds of other services. | Not published |
| Published rate limits | NoNo numeric API rate limit is published. The only limit is the contract's qualitative one against an unreasonable volume or rate of requests. | Not published |
Both entries last checked Sep 9, 2026.
What Discourse costs
$100/month
4 published plans, billed monthly- Billing unit
$100 a month for the site - Free tier
Yes - AI pricing
Not published - Vendor calls it
AI credit - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Full
4 of 9 not published by Discourse, checked
What Flarum costs
- Billing unit
There is no price and no paid tier - Free tier
Yes - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Full