Answer

Apache Answer is a self-hosted question-and-answer platform for community forums, help centers and internal knowledge bases, extendable with plugins.

15.7k stars, 1.4k forks Go On GitHub since September 2022

Visit website View on GitHub How to run it

Answer at a glance

Open sourceYes, Apache-2.0No paid parts in the repository
Health68 of 100Actively developed
Self-hostingDocker, Helm chart, Desktop appsOne-click in Unraid
AppsmacOS, Windows, Linux, including ARMBuilds in GitHub releases
Interface37 languagesIncluding English, German and French
Issue repliesWithin ~9 hoursMedian first reply; 33% of recent issues answered

What is Answer?

Answer, a project of the Apache Software Foundation, lets a team or community run its own question-and-answer site. Typical uses named by the project are a public community forum, a customer help center or an internal knowledge base. The server is written in Go with a Node.js-built frontend, and a plugin system lets developers add features of their own; a catalog of existing plugins is linked from the README. The interface ships in 37 languages, which helps for communities outside the English-speaking world.

Good fit if

  • You want an alternative to Stack Overflow for Teams or a hosted help-center forum that you run yourself.
  • Your support or engineering team needs searchable answers to recurring questions rather than threaded chat.
  • You plan to deploy on Kubernetes and want an official Helm chart.

Look elsewhere if

  • You need open-ended discussion threads and categories rather than questions with accepted answers: Discourse.
  • A lightweight PHP forum with extensions suits you better: Flarum.
  • You want a decentralised discussion platform spread across many servers: Lemmy.

Before you adopt it

Answer is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license, with no paid parts in the repository, and it is governed as an Apache project. Thirteen people committed during the last 90 days, and the latest release is v2.0.3 from October 2026. Installation is easy to start: there is a Docker image, a compose file with a single service, a Helm chart and prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows. Building from source needs Go 1.25 or later, Node.js 20 and pnpm 9.

Drafted with AI from the project's README and repository data, then checked against that data on 7 November 2026. Report a correction

How to run Answer yourself

One-click install

  • Unraid

Not listed in Umbrel, YunoHost, TrueNAS, CasaOS, Runtipi, Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts and Coolify. Checked against each panel’s app catalog on 12 November 2026.

Ways to install

Docker files
Dockerfile or compose file in the repository
Docker image
apache/answer: 3.9M pulls · x86-64, ARM64 · 60 MB download
Compose file
docker-compose.yaml: 1 service
Setup effort
1 of 5, judged from the compose file
Kubernetes
Helm chart in the repository
Desktop and mobile
Builds for macOS, Windows, Linux, including ARM in GitHub releases
Interface languages
37 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish
Show all 37

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Bosnian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Telugu, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh

Install instructions: answer.apache.org or the README on GitHub. Docker images and packages are checked weekly.

Answer health: is it still maintained?

68 of 100, actively developed

Release rhythmEvery ~2 monthsLatest: v2.0.3, 9 October 2026
Issue repliesWithin ~9 hoursMedian first reply; 33% of recent issues answered
Bus factorMedium riskThe most active of 10 authors wrote 53% of recent commits
  • Activity
    32 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 22 September 2026.
    18 / 30
  • Contributors
    10 people wrote the 32 commits of the last 90 days; the most active wrote 53% of them.
    14 / 20
  • Releases
    5+ releases in the last 12 months; the latest, v2.0.3, on 9 October 2026.
    16 / 20
  • Replies to issues
    Maintainers answered 33% of recent issues, with a median first reply after 9 hours.
    15 / 20
  • Security practices
    No OpenSSF Scorecard for this repository yet, so this part gets a neutral score.
    5 / 10

Read from GitHub on 12 November 2026. How the score works

Answer security

Security advisories are the vulnerabilities the maintainers disclosed on GitHub, with the versions that fix them; many advisories can mean careful disclosure as much as weak code.

Security advisoriesNone publishedNo advisories in the repository’s Security tab

Advisories read from GitHub on 12 November 2026.

Answer license: is it open source?

Answer uses Apache-2.0, an open-source license approved by the OSI.

  1. September 2022First published on GitHub.
  2. TodayApache-2.0.

Answer for developers

Written in

  • Go 61%
  • TypeScript 36%
  • HTML 1%
  • SCSS 1%
  • JavaScript <1%
  • Other <1%

Getting involved

Good first issues2Open, labelled “good first issue”Help wanted1Open, labelled “help wanted”
Contributing guideNot foundNo CONTRIBUTING file in the repository
Open issues98On GitHub
Authors, 90 days10Of 32 commits

Language shares are GitHub’s count of the code in the repository.

Alternatives to Answer

  • NodeBBNode.js based forum software built for the modern web 80 health · GPL-3.0 · 15.2k stars
  • FlarumSimple forum software for building great communities. 41 health · MIT · 16.4k stars
  • DiscourseA platform for community discussion. Free, open, simple. 73 health · GPL-2.0 · 48.1k stars
  • MastodonYour self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community 88 health · AGPL-3.0 · 50.6k stars
  • MisskeyA completely free and open interplanetary-microblogging platform 81 health · AGPL-3.0 · 11.4k stars

All 18 projects in Social networks & forums

Questions about Answer

Is Answer open source?

Yes. Answer is published under Apache-2.0, an OSI-approved open-source license.

Is Answer still maintained?

Its health score is 68 of 100 (actively developed). It had 32 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 22 September 2026, and its latest release came out on 9 October 2026.

How do I run Answer?

You can run it with the Docker image apache/answer, on Kubernetes with the Helm chart in the repository, as an app for macOS, Windows, Linux, including ARM and in one click from Unraid. The README on GitHub has the exact steps.

What is Answer written in?

Answer is written mainly in Go (61% of the code), with TypeScript (36%), by GitHub’s count of the repository.

What languages is Answer available in?

The repository has interface translations for 37 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Russian.

What are the alternatives to Answer?

Close alternatives in the Social networks & forums category include NodeBB, Flarum, Discourse.