⚡ Internet Forum Software
Internet forums, also known as message boards or bulletin boards, are online discussion sites that allow users to start discussions, post replies, and interact in an organized, threaded format with moderation and user management tools.
According to our statistics, Internet forum software is used on 0.5% of all websites.
⭐ Most Popular in 2025
The following chart shows the leading Internet forum software in 2025, based on market share.
The most popular is
You can also drill down by country:
🚀 Country Highlights
Here is a list of softwares that is especially popular in certain countries.Differences between global and country rankings are shown in parentheses.
✨ Best Internet Forum Software
Below is a more detailed list of all Internet forum software solutions we detect, ranked by their market share.
Rank Name Market share
1
bbPress
San Francisco, California, United States A free plugin that adds forum functionality to WordPress websites.
Free Open source
31.4%
2
London, United Kingdom A commercial Internet forum software based on PHP and MySQL.
$195+
15%
3
Marlow, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom An open-source forum software written in PHP.
Free Open source
14%
4
Richmond, Virginia, United States A commercial, customizable community software built with PHP and MySQL.
$99+/month
8.8%
5
El Segundo, California, United States A commercial forum software platform written in PHP that uses a MySQL or MariaDB database.
$179+
8.6%
6
Dover, Delaware, United States An open-source community platform built on Ruby on Rails.
Free Open source $20+/month
5.2%
7
Discuz!
Hefei, China A Chinese Internet forum software written in PHP.
Free 18,800 RMB+
4.4%
8
Las Vegas, Nevada, United States An open source PHP-based community forum software.
Free Open source
4%
9
WoltLab Suite
Potsdam, Germany A commercial software package designed for creating and managing online communities.
€129.99+
2.5%
10
MyBB
An open source, community developed bulletin board software built with PHP.
Free Open source
2%
11
Higher Logic Thrive
Arlington, Virginia, United States A cloud-based community platform for associations.
$10,000+/year
1%
12
Khoros Communities
Austin, Texas, United States An enterprise-grade community management platform that enables organizations to build, manage, and scale branded online communities.
$100,000+/year
1%
13
Arnhem, Netherlands An open source discussion platform written in PHP.
Free Open source €50+/month
0.7%
14
NodeBB
An open-source forum software built with Node.js that supports real-time streaming discussions, instant notifications via WebSockets, multiple database backends (Redis, MongoDB, PostgreSQL), mobile-friendly responsive design, and a REST API.
Free Open source $20+/month
0.4%
15
PunBB
A fast and lightweight PHP-based open source discussion board.
Free Open source
0.3%
16
Vanilla
Arlington, Virginia, United States An enterprise online community platform for B2B and B2C brands.
$24,000+/year
0.2%
17
Verint Community
Melville, New York, United States A community platform that provides an integrated suite of applications such as forums, blogs, articles, wikis, and media galleries.
$50,000+/year
0.2%
18
OpenACS
An open-source toolkit for building scalable, community-oriented web applications.
Free Open source
0.1%
19
Zulip
San Francisco, California, United States An open source team chat and collaboration software available in cloud and self-hosted versions.
Free Open source $8+/user/month
0.1%
-
Lemmy
A decentralized, open-source social link aggregation and discussion platform built on the ActivityPub protocol as an alternative to Reddit.
Free Open source
0.05%
👉 See Also
Data is based on the analysis of 2,736,712 websites.
Statistics were last calculated on
December 25, 2025 .
For details, see our
methodology and
disclaimer .
bbPress with an impressive share of 31.4%, followed by XenForo with 15% and phpBB with 14%.Discuz! 4.4%
WoltLab Suite 2.5%
MyBB 2%
Higher Logic Thrive 1%
Khoros Communities 1%NodeBB 0.4%
Zulip
Lemmy
Internet forum