Talkyard is community discussion software for building forums, Q&A sites, idea voting spaces, chat channels, and embedded blog comments.
It combines several discussion patterns in one platform, letting site owners host structured conversations where useful comments can rise to the top, answers can be selected, and readers can participate without relying on third-party comment systems.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports forum discussions, question-and-answer topics, idea voting, chat channels, and blog comments.
- Lets users upvote ideas and sort discussions by votes.
- Provides anonymous commenting for sensitive questions, feedback, or educational use cases.
- Includes tags with values so communities can organise, filter, and prioritise topics.
- Offers embedded blog comments without advertising or tracking.
Website: github.com/debiki/talkyard
Support:
Developer: Kaj Magnus Lindberg and contributors
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0

Talkyard is written in TypeScript and Scala. Learn TypeScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Scala with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Internet Forum Software | |
|---|---|
| Discourse | Discussion forum, mailing list, and long-form chat room |
| NodeBB | Community platform for the modern web |
| Flarum | Simple discussion platform for your website |
| Forem | Platform for building modern, independent, and safe communities |
| phpBB | Flat-forum bulletin board software solution |
| bbPress | Forum software with a twist from the creators of WordPress |
| MyBB | Intuitive, extensible forum software |
| miniBB | Easy, lite, and speedy quick forum |
| Vanilla | Simple and flexible forum software |
| Thredded | Simple and feature rich Rails forum engine |
| Simple Machines Forum | Elegant, effective, powerful forum software |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

