Discourse vs Mattermost

Discourse (The 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.) and Mattermost (Mattermost is a secure collaboration platform for connecting your teams, tools and processes to accelerate mission-critical work.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Mattermost (rank #38) holds a modest lead over Discourse (rank #189) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (62 vs 50). The gap of 12 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Mattermost is ahead of Discourse. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Mattermost is ahead of Discourse. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Mattermost is slightly ahead of Discourse. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Mattermost is clearly ahead of Discourse. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Discourse is slightly ahead of Mattermost.

Discourse carries 55,678 GitHub stars across 620 public repos, with 90 repositories active in the last 90 days and 44 external contributors on record. Mattermost shows 49,882 stars across 262 public repos, 58 active in the last 90 days and 105 external contributors.

Discourse is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Mattermost looks better where reach is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.