Open-source alternative
Replace Circle with Discourse
The best open-source alternative to Circle is Discourse, self-hosted on Railway. A community you host. Discourse is GPLv2 — Circle without the community seat.
Estimated save $2,400 a year.
Open the stackStart on Railway
How Circle compares
| Circle | Discourse | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Hosted subscription | Open-source or fair-code license; you pay the host |
| Hosting | Vendor cloud | Self-hosted on Railway or any VPS |
| Rough monthly cost | Public list price not verified this run | Hosting only — no SaaS seat meter in this repo |
- Discourse
GPLv2 forum and community platform
FAQ
- Is it free?
- The Discourse licenses are open source or fair-code. You still pay hosting (Railway or any VPS) and any APIs the stack calls. There is no Circle seat or task bill on this path.
- Can I migrate from Circle?
- Yes. Start with the workflows or data you actually use, then cut over. The Discourse stack page has the agent prompt and the cost table; most teams rebuild the slice that matters and leave old Circle links until they expire.
- How do I deploy it?
- Open the Discourse stack, copy the agent prompt, and deploy on Railway (one service, PORT, and a volume when the app needs disk). Placeholder: Discourse (Postgres + Redis + Sidekiq) plus a volume for uploads. SMTP via Resend. No one-click template in this repo yet — Start on Railway. Chat rooms stay on /stacks/stoat-chat or /stacks/rocket-chat.
- What does this replace?
- Circle. The published small-team estimate on this stack is $2,400 a year.
Related pages
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