Discourse vs Proton Mail

Discourse (The 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.) and Proton Mail both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Discourse (rank #189) holds a modest lead over Proton Mail (rank #401) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (50 vs 41). The gap of 9 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

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. Proton Mail shows 16,265 stars across 186 public repos, 19 active in the last 90 days and 20 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Discourse's footprint is roughly 3.4x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Discourse is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Proton Mail 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.