The Differences Between Flarum, MyBB, vBulletin and XenForo

If you're thinking about starting a forum today, you'll probably come across the same handful of names: Flarum, MyBB, vBulletin, and XenForo.

They all accomplish roughly the same thing — they give you a platform for building an online discussion community — but they're actually pretty different once you start looking at how they're designed, how they're managed, and what kind of community they're best suited for.

I figured I'd put together a quick comparison for anyone trying to decide between them.

Flarum

Flarum is probably the most modern-looking of the four right out of the box.

Instead of the traditional forum layout with lots of separate pages, menus, and categories, Flarum feels more like a modern web application. Discussions load quickly, the interface is clean, and it works particularly well on mobile devices.

One of the things I like about Flarum is how lightweight the core software is. Instead of trying to include every possible feature by default, additional functionality can be added through extensions.

What stands out:

• Free and open source
• Modern, minimalist interface
• Excellent mobile experience
• Large extension ecosystem
• Lightweight compared with traditional forum software
• Built around PHP and MySQL/MariaDB
• Easy to customize if you're comfortable working with a server

The extension-based approach is both a strength and a weakness. You can build a very customized community, but features that might be included by default with other forum platforms sometimes require installing another extension.

Flarum is a great choice if you want your community to feel like a modern discussion platform rather than a traditional message board.

MyBB

MyBB represents the more traditional forum experience.

If you used internet forums throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, MyBB will immediately feel familiar. You have forums, subforums, threads, posts, user groups, private messages, signatures, moderators, and all the other features you'd expect from classic bulletin-board software.

It's also completely free and open source.

What stands out:

• Free and open source
• Traditional forum layout
• Mature permission and user-group system
• Plugins and themes available
• Relatively straightforward to host
• Familiar interface for longtime forum users

MyBB isn't as sleek as Flarum out of the box, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some communities actually benefit from the traditional structure, especially larger forums with lots of different categories and subforums.

If you want the classic internet forum experience without paying for a software license, MyBB remains an interesting option.

vBulletin

vBulletin is one of the biggest names in forum history.

A huge number of major forums ran vBulletin during the 2000s and 2010s, and for a long time it was practically synonymous with large online message boards.

Unlike Flarum and MyBB, however, vBulletin is commercial software.

What stands out:

• Long history in the forum world
• Designed to handle established communities
• Extensive administration features
• Built-in forum/community functionality
• Commercial support
• Large number of older communities still using it

Older versions of vBulletin — particularly the vBulletin 3 and 4 era — developed an extremely loyal following. Some longtime forum owners still prefer the workflow and structure of those versions.

Modern vBulletin has changed considerably since then, so someone remembering vBulletin from an old forum shouldn't necessarily expect today's version to be exactly the same experience.

It's worth looking at if you want a commercial forum package with a long track record, but it's very different from the lightweight approach taken by something like Flarum.

XenForo

XenForo is another commercial platform and has become extremely popular among serious forum operators.

Interestingly, XenForo was originally created by former vBulletin developers, and you can see some of that traditional forum DNA in the software. It retains the structure people expect from a message board while adding a much more modern interface and feature set.

What stands out:

• Polished interface
• Strong moderation tools
• Powerful permissions system
• Large add-on ecosystem
• Good performance
• Active development
• Designed with larger communities in mind

XenForo sits somewhere between the old and new generations of forum software.

It still feels unmistakably like a forum, but it doesn't feel like you're using software designed 20 years ago.

The biggest downside compared with Flarum or MyBB is simply that XenForo requires a paid license, and some additional functionality can involve paid add-ons as well.

So what's actually different?

The easiest way I'd describe them is:

Flarum — Modern, lightweight and minimalist.

MyBB — Free, traditional and highly recognizable as a classic forum.

vBulletin — The longtime veteran that helped define what internet forums looked like.

XenForo — A modern commercial evolution of the traditional forum concept.

There's really no universal "best" forum software because the right choice depends heavily on the type of community you're trying to build.

Personally, I think one of the most interesting differences is the philosophy behind them. Flarum tries to rethink what a forum should look and feel like today, while platforms such as MyBB and XenForo retain much more of the structure that made traditional forums successful in the first place.

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