Discourse vs Zammad

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

Zammad (rank #152) holds a narrow lead over Discourse (rank #189) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (52 vs 50). The gap of 2 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Zammad is ahead of Discourse. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Zammad is clearly ahead of Discourse. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Discourse is clearly ahead of Zammad. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Discourse is clearly ahead of Zammad.

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. Zammad shows 6,394 stars across 11 public repos, 9 active in the last 90 days and 27 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Discourse's footprint is roughly 8.7x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Discourse is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Zammad looks better where community 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.