# Discourse

35 Hacker News commenters recommended Discourse and 30 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Open-source, self-hostable threaded forum that people recommend as an asynchronous alternative to Discord. Common caveat: gamified badges and notifications.

## Why people recommend it

- Threaded async discussion that persists (5 comments): "It's everything Discord isn't: asynchronous, open source, and self-hostable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963226)) "The nice thing about Discourse is, I feel like threads are more permanent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49888306)) "Threaded BBS are much better for organizing communities, like Discourse." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46986558))
- Easy to use and friction-free (3 comments): "It's incredibly nice and works just as well on mobile and desktop." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757096)) "Discourse has been really nice for about a decade." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48758944)) "Discourse has much less friction." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484499))
- Easy setup and self-hosting (3 comments): "Every once in a while you have to run a command. Over the last 10-12 years there were I think 2 problems where this did not work out of the box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804357)) "All of my self hosted SAAS (redmine , gitea, discourse , vaultwaden , GLPI etc etc )" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926490)) "there have been a bunch of improvements in the setup process recently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954501))
- Excellent, popular forum software (2 comments): "I think Discourse is the platform of choice right now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346721)) "At being forum software, it's excellent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060913))

## What people warn about

- Dated, impersonal look (3 comments): "they should have cloned the "discourse" web app/forum. Still looks like shit on every platform" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46958188)) "Discourse is less of a PITA than Discord, but only marginally. It's still a fugly web forum." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703295)) "Not sure why modern alternatives to phpBB, like Discourse, feel so impersonal and boring." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642894))
- Merged categories and threading model (3 comments): "instead of categories so project maintainers will never be allowed to moderate their own spaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064185)) "the threading model that was popularized by Discourse is really not appealing at all" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48759189)) "Discourse UX is so much worse than phpBB because it merges all categories." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49620544))
- Gamified badges and notifications (2 comments): "I just wish that the whole badges thing was off by default. It's a forced gamification that's just annoying and doesn't really teach anything." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46956252)) "all the bullshit notifications about level promotions, earning badges" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809873))
- Slow loading and poor performance (2 comments): "Discourse "loading" screen is the worst user experience. It's long, non-informative and meaningless." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46376580)) "it signalled that they completely gave up on providing a performant forum software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46377876))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Google Groups](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-groups.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Discourse", https://hackerapproved.com/p/discourse/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).