Discourse vs reddit

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

Discourse (rank #189) holds a modest lead over reddit (rank #430) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (50 vs 40). The gap of 10 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

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. reddit shows 4,004 stars across 174 public repos, 26 active in the last 90 days and 16 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Discourse's footprint is roughly 13.9x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Discourse is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. reddit 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.