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Open source alternatives to Facebook Groups

We track 6 open-source Facebook Groups alternatives, of which 4 currently score 70 or above on Repoly's GitHub health scale and 2 ship a Docker image. Discourse leads on health at 99/100 with 1616 commits in the last 90 days; across all 6 projects you are choosing between AGPL-3.0, GPL-2.0, MIT.

6
Alternatives
82k
Combined stars
2,742
Commits / 90 days
2
With Docker
Licence family Licence

Showing 6 of 6 tools

All 6 Facebook Groups alternatives, ranked by health

  • Top pick · highest health

    Discourse

    99 GOOD

    Advanced forum / community solution based on Ruby and JS.

    ★ 48k · ⟳ today · _gh-attach-assets · GPL-2.0

    Docker
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • Lemmy

    97 GOOD

    Link aggregator for the fediverse (alternative to Reddit).

    ★ 15k · ⟳ 2 days ago · 0.19.20 · AGPL-3.0

    DockerRust
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • Elgg

    83 GOOD

    Powerful open source social networking engine.

    ★ 1.7k · ⟳ 4 days ago · 7.1.0 · GPL-2.0

    PHP
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • Flarum

    59 SLOWING

    Delightfully simple forums. Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun again.

    ★ 16k · ⟳ 18 days ago · v1.8.19 · MIT

    PHP
    Website ↗ Source ↗

  • BuddyPress

    55 SLOWING

    Powerful plugin that takes your WordPress.org powered site beyond the blog with social-network features like user profiles, activity streams, user groups, and more.

    ★ 255 · ⟳ 1 months ago · GPL-2.0

    PHP
    Website ↗ Source ↗

Facebook Groups alternatives: common questions

What is the most maintained open source alternative to Facebook Groups?

Discourse scores highest at 99/100, with 1616 commits in the last 90 days, 48k GitHub stars and its latest release (_gh-attach-assets) published 2 months ago. It is also the most active by raw commit count.

Which Facebook Groups alternatives use a permissive licence?

1 of 6 are permissively licensed (MIT, Apache, BSD or similar): Flarum (MIT). 5 use copyleft licences such as GPL or AGPL, which require you to publish changes if you distribute a modified version.

Which Facebook Groups alternatives run in Docker?

2 of 6 publish a Docker image or Compose file: Discourse, Lemmy. Docker support contributes 10 of the 100 available health points, because it is the clearest signal that self-hosting is a supported path rather than an afterthought.