Common Room vs Discourse
Common Room and Discourse are both community platforms tools. Common Room is aimed at small businesses and enterprise, while Discourse is aimed at developers and enterprise. Discourse costs less, from $100/mo versus $2500/mo for Common Room. Only Discourse has a free plan.
Buyer signal platform for web, product and community intent
Modern open-source forum software
| Pricing | Paid · $2500 | Open source · $100 |
| Starting price | $2500/mo | $100/mo |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Built for | Small businesses, Enterprise | Developers, Enterprise |
| Platforms | web | web |
| Country | US · 2020 | US · 2013 |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose Common Room if
B2B SaaS teams, especially product-led and developer-tool companies, that want to turn scattered intent signals into prioritized pipeline.
- Combines first-party product and community signals with third-party intent
- Strong fit for developer and open-source go-to-market motions
- Unlimited alerts, workflows and segments on every plan
Look elsewhere if: Early-stage startups or teams that only need a contact database and email sequences (Apollo, Clay, Instantly).
Choose Discourse if
Companies and projects that want durable, searchable community knowledge.
- Searchable, SEO-friendly knowledge
- Open source and self-hostable
- Mature moderation
Look elsewhere if: Casual real-time chat communities (Discord).
Common Room vs Discourse pricing
Common Room
- Essential$2,500/moBilled annually; 5 seats, 100k contacts, 5k RoomieAI credits
- AdvancedCustom15 seats, 250k contacts, dedicated CSM
- EnterpriseCustom30 seats, 750k contacts, unlimited website deanonymization
Discourse
- Self-hosted$0Open source (GPL), run on your own servers
- Free$0Hosted; 2 staff seats, 500k page views, 5 GB storage
- Pro$100/mo5 staff seats, 20 GB storage, 15+ plugins
- Business$500/mo15 staff seats, 100 GB storage, priority support
- EnterpriseCustomUnlimited staff, 1M+ page views, 99.9% uptime
Common Room · Key features
- Unified signals from website, product, CRM, community, GitHub and social
- Person360 identity resolution that ties anonymous activity to real people
- Website visitor deanonymization at person and account level
- RoomieAI agents for account research, scoring and personalized outreach
- Prospector for finding buying-committee contacts in a 400M+ directory
- DataAgent that flags duplicates, stale records and CRM gaps
Cons
- Entry plan costs $30,000 per year with annual billing only
- No free plan or self-serve trial; every deal goes through a demo
- Credit-based AI and enrichment usage needs monitoring
Discourse · Key features
- Threaded discussions with categories and tags
- Trust levels and moderation tools
- Real-time chat channels
- Discourse AI: summaries, search, related topics
- SSO and API
- Plugins and themes
Cons
- Less real-time feel than Discord
- Self-hosting requires maintenance
- Hosted plans pricey at scale
Common Room vs Discourse: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Common Room or Discourse?
Discourse starts at $100/mo and Common Room at $2500/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Common Room and Discourse have a free plan?
Common Room has no free plan. Discourse has a free plan.
Which is better for small businesses, Common Room or Discourse?
Common Room lists small businesses as a core audience, while Discourse is aimed more at developers and enterprise.