# How heavy or light discourse in terms of server usage?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-heavy-or-light-discourse-in-terms-of-server-usage/355953
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [March 5, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-heavy-or-light-discourse-in-terms-of-server-usage/355953 "2025-03-05T22:45:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![RoldanLT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/da6949/32.png) [@RoldanLT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RoldanLT)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-heavy-or-light-discourse-in-terms-of-server-usage/355953/1 "2025-03-05T22:45:00Z")

</div>

Hi,

Thinking of converting several big XenForo forums into discourse in the future if XenForo development continues to degrade.

How much discourse needs in terms of server specs needed for a big enough forum?

One forum I have has:

- 8-10k new posts daily
- 800-1k new topics daily
- 16-17k daily logged-in users
- 70-80k unique users daily, including guest
- 8-10TB daily bandwidth usage
- 25GB MySQL Database

Right now, with XenForo 2.3 plus 60+ 3rd party plugins, I use this server configuration:

- Intel Xeon-E 2288G, 8c/16t
- 128GB DDR4 ECC 2666MHz

Does discourse require more RAM or CPU, or can it handle fine with the same specs?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![RoldanLT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/da6949/32.png) [@RoldanLT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RoldanLT)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 10:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-heavy-or-light-discourse-in-terms-of-server-usage/355953/2 "2025-03-05T22:46:15Z")

</div>

By the way, I cannot afford the pricing of hosted plans, so my only option is to self-host discourse.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 10:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-heavy-or-light-discourse-in-terms-of-server-usage/355953/3 "2025-03-05T22:53:04Z")

</div>

I would recommend a cdn and assets on s3, but I think you’d likely be ok.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![RoldanLT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/da6949/32.png) [@RoldanLT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RoldanLT)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 10:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-heavy-or-light-discourse-in-terms-of-server-usage/355953/4 "2025-03-05T22:53:56Z")

</div>

> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> I would recommend a cdn

Yes, I’m already using Cloudflare for this.

> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> assets on s3

Will use CF R2 also.
