Discourse vs Simple Machines Forum
Head-to-head usage across the sites we track.
Top sites by authority
Discourse · Simple Machines Forum · how many of each technology's sites sit in the web's highest authority tiers
Open Page Rank 9+
21
0
Open Page Rank 8+
194
6
Open Page Rank 7+
551
26
Open Page Rank 6+
864
41
Open Page Rank 5+
1,198
71
Open Page Rank scores 0 to 10 from the open web link graph; 9+ covers only a few hundred domains worldwide.
By country
Discourse · Simple Machines Forum · share of sites in each country using one or the other
United States
3,528
541
India
2,634
186
United Kingdom
2,232
302
Germany
2,079
365
Canada
1,983
187
France
1,794
219
Brazil
1,806
155
Spain
1,566
217
Audience countries from the Chrome UX Report, top markets of either technology.
Real user performance
| Metric | Discourse | Simple Machines Forum |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | 1.8 s | 1.2 s |
| INP | 75 ms | 50 ms |
| CLS | 0 | 0 |
| TTFB | 800 ms | 500 ms |
Median site's p75 values from the Chrome UX Report, Aug 2026. Lower is better; green meets Google's "good" threshold. This describes the sites that use each technology, not the technology's own overhead.