Is BuddyPress good for a community forum?

Hello,

I am currently having a WordPress blog with a decent number of visitors. Some of them are regular who asked me if I can create a forum, so the discussions can be better. I think it would be quite good as well.

While taking a look at forum software, I came across a few and the only ones I liked were paid and quite expensive. So, I am wondering if I should just use BuddyPress and maybe later switch to something like Xenforo or should I start with them? Is BuddyPress good enough for a community forum?

I am sure there will be few regular users in the forum, but not sure if that will be anywhere close to being successful as the blog.

Also, I am thinking to install it in the same web host. So, should I just create a new WordPress blog and install BuddyPress plugin on it? I am also aware of another software from WordPress called bbpress, but I assume BuddyPress would be much more fun since it creates social-media kinda community, instead of a plain forum.

Also, I had to do quite a few optimizations to make sure my blog opens fast. So, will I need to perform anything more, since it might be a bit more complicated?

What would be your suggestion?

Edit: I also came across something called BuddyBoss. People seemed to talk highly of it. I checked their website and it also seems quite expensive but people called it free. So, it seems they changed their business model?