Software Alternatives & Reviews

Stack Overflow VS Discourse

Compare Stack Overflow VS Discourse and see what are their differences

Stack Overflow logo Stack Overflow

Community-based Q&A part of the Stack Exchange platform.

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • Stack Overflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

Stack Overflow videos

Episode 002 - Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019 Review

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Stack Overflow and Discourse)
Knowledge Sharing
100 100%
0% 0
Forums
0 0%
100% 100
Questions And Answers
100 100%
0% 0
Forums And Forum Software

User comments

Share your experience with using Stack Overflow and Discourse. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Stack Overflow and Discourse

Stack Overflow Reviews

Great Products for Finding Startup Jobs
Stack Overflow — Engineering-heavy job board with job listings from around the world that integrates nicely with Stack Overflow’s broader ecosystem.
Source: medium.com

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Stack Overflow seems to be a lot more popular than Discourse. While we know about 876 links to Stack Overflow, we've tracked only 23 mentions of Discourse. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Stack Overflow mentions (876)

  • Things you should do in your dev journey 🖥️👩‍💻
    Choose a Language and Stack: Research programming languages and technology stacks on platforms like Stack Overflow and GitHub. You can also explore articles on sites like TechCrunch and Dev.to discussing the latest trends and the pros and cons of different languages and frameworks. - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • Building Machine Learning Projects: Tips for Developers to Learn Effectively
    Stack Overflow: The go-to Q&A platform for troubleshooting common and unique programming problems. - Source: dev.to / 24 days ago
  • Free Resources Every Web Developer Should Know About
    Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com/). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Web Development Tools and Resources
    Stack Overflow (Visit Site) - As a community Q&A platform, Stack Overflow is indispensable for troubleshooting and advice on coding issues. It caters to all levels of developers, from beginners to experts. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • The Ultimate Roadmap to a Full-Stack Developer
    Stack Overflow - Q&A platform where developers can ask questions and find answers on a wide range of topics related to frontend and backend development. Stack Overflow. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
View more

Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Stack Overflow and Discourse, you can also consider the following products

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Quora - Quora is a place to gain and share knowledge. It's a platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers.

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

Reddit - Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. Get a constantly updating feed of breaking news, fun stories, pics, memes, and videos just for you.

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.