Flarum vs LaunchPass Comparison 2026
Both cover community platforms. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Flarum | LaunchPass | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | From $29 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | 14 days |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | 3.5% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web | Not stated |
| Covers | Community Platforms | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions, Monetization & Payments |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Flarum
Forum software you host yourself
Flarum is forum software installed on your own server, so the discussion, the members and the domain belong to whoever runs it rather than to a platform. Extensions add what the core deliberately leaves out. There is no hosted tier and no monthly fee, which trades a bill for the work of running it. Anybody who does not want to think about PHP, a database and backups should buy hosted community software instead.
Our note
Price the hosting and an hour a month of your own time before calling this free, because that is what it actually costs and it is still far less than hosted community software. Choose it for ownership rather than for the saving, since the saving is real but the ownership is the part you cannot buy back later.
LaunchPass
Charge for access to a Discord or Slack group
LaunchPass puts a paywall in front of a chat community you already run, and hands out and removes the roles as people pay and lapse. It connects to Discord, Slack and Telegram, and the money arrives through your own Stripe account. It manages access rather than hosting anything, so the community stays where your members already are.
Our note
Sensible if your community is already somewhere and already wanted. Compare it against DoorFee if the community is on Discord, since DoorFee sells the membership as well as gating it, and against Circle or Skool if you were half thinking of moving anyway.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.