For a self-hosted link aggregator, the first results are reddit/reddit (Reddit is the original open-source social news platform with link submission, voting, threaded comments, user communities, and moderation tools, making it a flagship self-hostable link aggregator), lemmynet/lemmy (Lemmy is a self-hosted, federated link aggregation and discussion platform that directly matches the Hacker News model, supporting link submission, voting, threaded comments, user communities, and moderation tools) and laymonage/giscus (Giscus is a comment widget that uses GitHub Discussions for storing conversations, not a self-hostable link-aggregation platform with voting, submissions, or user communities — it provides only the discussion component of a broader social news site). mlogclub/bbs-go and flarum/flarum round out the shortlist. Compare the match explanations and check the project documentation against your requirements.
Open-source software for building community-driven link sharing sites similar to Hacker News or Reddit.
This project is a Python web application that functions as a community discussion forum and social news aggregator. It provides a system for organizing threaded conversations and niche interest groups into themed communities where users can post content and links. The platform incorporates a voting system to determine the visibility and popularity of content. It includes community management tooling for content moderation and user-based discovery. The codebase covers social media platform architecture and high traffic system design, utilizing a relational database schema, a distributed cache
Reddit is the original open-source social news platform with link submission, voting, threaded comments, user communities, and moderation tools, making it a flagship self-hostable link aggregator.
Lemmy is a self-hosted, federated discussion platform that enables the operation of independent, decentralized social networking servers. By implementing the ActivityPub protocol, it allows autonomous instances to exchange content, synchronize user interactions, and participate in a global, distributed network without centralized control. The platform distinguishes itself through a decoupled architecture that separates the backend API from the frontend, facilitating the development of custom interfaces while maintaining unified user handles and cross-platform communication. It provides granul
Lemmy is a self-hosted, federated link aggregation and discussion platform that directly matches the Hacker News model, supporting link submission, voting, threaded comments, user communities, and moderation tools.
Giscus is an open-source discussion widget and website commenting system that uses GitHub Discussions as its backend for storing and managing conversations. It provides an embeddable web component that connects static or dynamic websites to the GitHub API, allowing users to authenticate and write responses using a Markdown-based commenting engine. The system operates by mapping specific website page paths to unique remote discussion threads. This integration enables community engagement and social interaction on websites without the requirement of hosting a private database or backend server.
Giscus is a comment widget that uses GitHub Discussions for storing conversations, not a self-hostable link-aggregation platform with voting, submissions, or user communities — it provides only the discussion component of a broader social news site.
bbs-go is a community forum software written in Go. It functions as a gamified community platform and social network framework, providing tools for hosting public discussions, managing knowledge bases, and coordinating user identities. The platform is distinguished by an integrated gamification engine that tracks activity via daily check-ins and reward tasks to award experience points, levels, and badges. It also features a specialized identity and access manager that supports role-based access control and third-party identity federation, including Google Sign-In integration. The system cove
This community forum software offers discussion threads, voting, and moderation, but it is built as a general-purpose forum with gamification rather than a link-aggregation platform modeled on Hacker News, so it misses the core link-submission workflow and viral front-page sorting you are looking for.
Flarum is a PHP-based community forum software designed for building and managing structured online discussion spaces. It functions as a self-hosted discussion forum and threaded discussion engine, providing a platform for users to create and participate in community conversations. The platform is designed as an extensible community platform, allowing for customizable forum development through the use of custom extenders to modify system behavior and features. The system includes capabilities for online community management and forum hosting, supported by a console interface for executing ad
Flarum is a self-hosted forum software for threaded discussions, but it does not provide the link submission and voting system that a social news platform like Reddit or Hacker News requires, making it a neighbouring category rather than the exact tool you need.
Mastodon is a self-hosted, decentralized social networking platform that functions as a microblogging application. It enables independent server instances to communicate and exchange social data through the standardized ActivityPub protocol, allowing users to participate in a global, interoperable network. The platform distinguishes itself through its federated architecture, which grants administrators full control over their community instances. This includes comprehensive tools for user moderation, account management, and the enforcement of community guidelines. The system is designed to ha
Mastodon is a federated microblogging platform, not a link aggregator with voting; it lacks the upvote/downvote system central to Hacker News or Reddit-style platforms.
Nodeclub is a self-hosted community forum and bulletin board system built as a Node.js web application. It serves as a platform for hosting social communities and managing user discussions. The software incorporates a markdown-based content management system for authoring rich text posts. It includes tools for user account management, registration, and administrative account activation to control platform access. The system provides content moderation through HTML sanitization and post submission rate limits. Additional capabilities include automated email notifications, Google Analytics int
Nodeclub is a self-hosted forum and bulletin board system, not a link-aggregation platform with voting — it supports discussions and moderation but lacks the voting mechanism and link-submission focus that define a Hacker News-style social news site.
This project is a GitHub-based discussion forum and community platform designed for developers and researchers to exchange techniques for bypassing network blocks and filters. It serves as a multilingual technical forum dedicated to coordinating information sharing and research on internet censorship circumvention. The platform utilizes GitHub issues as its primary threading model and employs Git for state persistence. This allows for open source collaboration and the exchange of specialized knowledge across different languages to maintain access to the open internet. The system supports tec
This is a GitHub-issues-based forum for discussing censorship circumvention techniques — a specialized discussion platform, not a general-purpose link aggregator with voting, link submission, and community features.
Gitalk is a comment system that uses GitHub Issues as a backend to store and manage discussions for websites. It provides a comment component built with Preact for embedding interactive discussion areas into web pages. The system utilizes GitHub OAuth for identity verification, allowing users to authenticate through their GitHub accounts to manage comment permissions. It also includes a multi-language widget that supports interface translation based on browser settings or manual configuration. The project covers broader capabilities for comment section management, including the ability to re
Gitalk is a GitHub-Issues‑backed comment component for websites, not a full link‑aggregation platform with voting, submissions, or user communities—so while it provides discussion threads, it lacks the core features this search requires.
FlaskBB is a forum software for building online communities and structured discussions, developed using the Flask web framework. It provides a system for organizing public conversations, rendering rich text via a Markdown processor, and managing a multilingual localization engine to support global audiences. The platform features an extensible plugin framework that allows for the addition of custom logic and new features to the core forum functionality. Access is managed through a role-based access control system that assigns permissions to user groups to restrict or grant access to specific
FlaskBB is a self-hostable forum platform for general discussions, not a Hacker News-style link aggregator with dedicated link submission, voting, and ranking mechanics.
Discourse is an open-source forum engine designed to facilitate long-form threaded conversations and community management. Built as a server-side application, it provides a structured, category-based interface for interactive online communities, supporting user authentication, moderation, and real-time content delivery. The platform utilizes a relational database to manage complex relationships between users, topics, and site settings. The application distinguishes itself through a modular architecture that allows for custom plugins and themes, enabling the adaptation of discussion spaces to
Discourse is a self-hostable forum engine for threaded discussions and community management, but it lacks the dedicated link submission and voting system that define a Hacker-News-style link aggregator.
This project is a self-hosted question and answer platform and knowledge management system. It provides a centralized repository for documented answers and community discussions used to support users and resolve technical issues. The system functions as a plugin-based community forum, utilizing a modular extension system to add custom features and tools. It employs a decoupled architecture with a RESTful API backend to separate business logic from the user interface. The platform covers several domain areas including internal knowledge management, customer help centers, and community Q&A hos
Apache Answer is a self-hosted Q&A and knowledge management platform with community discussion features, but it is built for questions and answers rather than link submission and voting on links, which is the core of the Hacker News–style social news platform you are looking for.
| Repository | Stars | Language | License | Last push |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| reddit/reddit | 17K | Python | NOASSERTION | |
| lemmynet/lemmy | 14.5K | Rust | AGPL-3.0 | |
| laymonage/giscus |
| 11.8K |
| TypeScript |
| MIT |
| mlogclub/bbs-go | 3.4K | Go | gpl-3.0 |
| flarum/flarum | 16.3K | PHP | MIT |
| mastodon/mastodon | 50.1K | Ruby | AGPL-3.0 |
| cnodejs/nodeclub | 9.3K | JavaScript | MIT |
| net4people/bbs | 5.2K | Python | — |
| gitalk/gitalk | 7.2K | JavaScript | MIT |
| flaskbb/flaskbb | 2.7K | Python | NOASSERTION |