Flarum vs vBulletin
Flarum
flarum.orgvBulletin
vbulletin.comSide by side
| Figure | Flarum | vBulletin |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $14.99/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 2 |
| Spec score · Discussion Forum Software | 7.9 (#4) | 6.9 (#10) |
| Spec score · Forum Software | 7.9 (#6) | 6.9 (#16) |
| Spec score · Community Building Platforms | 7.8 (#13) | 6.9 (#25) |
| Spec score · Online Community Platforms | 7.8 (#29) | 6.9 (#50) |
| Community tools | The homepage lists groups and permissions, moderation and flagging, themes and custom CSS, and in-browser notifications among its features. | The manual describes forums, blogs, social groups, private messages, visitor messages, and user albums as channels. |
| Customization | Flarum's extension-based design lets administrators disable unneeded features and add extensions. | Administrators can change styles through the Style Generator and edit templates through the Style Manager. |
| Hosting requirements | Self-hosting requires Apache or Nginx, PHP 8.3 or later, a supported database, and SSH access for some maintenance tasks. | For self-hosting, the manual recommends PHP 7.3 or greater and MySQL 8 or greater. |
| Product | Flarum is free, open-source forum software for running a discussion community on a website. | vBulletin is forum and community publishing software. |
| Security | The installation guide says Flarum's default public directory keeps sensitive source code files inaccessible from the web root. | The manual says post requests are restricted to the site's domain unless other referrers are added to a whitelist. |
| Support | Flarum directs users with questions to its community forum, where users can get help with their instances. | The vBulletin 6 license announcement includes one month of ticket support and says the average ticket is answered within 24 hours. |
Plans
In their own words
Flarum
Flarum is free, open-source forum software for running discussions on websites and online communities. It provides group permissions, category access controls, moderation and flagging. Administrators can adjust settings, themes, CSS and extensions, and disable unneeded features. Members can write with lightweight Markdown or WYSIWYG editors. Notifications include in-browser alerts and email digests, while extensions can provide real-time notifications. A REST API lets external scripts interact with the forum and follows JSON:API practices. The extension manager discovers and installs add-ons, most of which are open source and free. Self-hosting requires Apache or Nginx, PHP 8.3 or later, a supported database and SSH access for some maintenance. Flarum is MIT-licensed and directs support questions to its community forum. Its documentation describes version 2.0 as a release candidate, not a final stable release. The project serves communities from small hobby groups to large enterprise forums.