How to disable comments in WordPress (every method)

Before you switch comments off

If spam is the real reason, you may not need to turn comments off at all. Keep the conversation and hand off the spam work: CommentCamp is our free comments and community platform, launching with an official WordPress plugin, automated spam filtering and a moderation queue, and site owners pay $0, with no ads. It's in private early access: join the waitlist to get an invite as rollout expands.

If you stay on WordPress's own comments, our comment spam guide covers the setup. WordPress already:

• holds comments with 2 or more links for moderation by default
• rejects a new comment from the same IP address or email within 15 seconds of the last one
• lets you require manual approval or a previously approved comment, add moderation keywords and close comments on old posts (14 days by default once switched on)

Then add a filter from our WordPress anti-spam plugins guide: Akismet Anti-spam (5+ million active installs; pay what you want for non-commercial sites, or $9.95 per month billed yearly on Pro) or the free Antispam Bee (700,000+ active installs).

Turn off comments on new posts

1. Go to Settings > Discussion.
2. Under "Default post settings", uncheck "Allow people to submit comments on new posts".
3. Optionally uncheck "Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts" and "Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the post".
4. Click Save Changes.

All three boxes are on by default in a new install. WordPress notes right below them: "Individual posts may override these settings. Changes here will only be applied to new posts." New pages already start with comments closed. Every option on that screen is explained in WordPress comment settings.

Close comments on existing posts and pages

Older posts keep their own setting, so close them in bulk:

1. Go to Posts > All Posts (or Pages > All Pages).
2. Optional: in Screen Options, raise "Number of items per page" from the default 20 (the maximum is 999).
3. Tick the checkbox at the top of the list to select every post on the page.
4. Choose "Edit" from Bulk actions and click Apply.
5. Set Comments to "Do not allow" (and Pings too, if you like), then click Update.

For a single post, open it in the block editor, go to the Discussion panel in the sidebar and choose "Closed". WordPress describes it as: "Visitors cannot add new comments or replies. Existing comments remain visible." In the post list, Quick Edit has an "Allow Comments" checkbox that does the same.

With WP-CLI, one command closes comments on all your posts:

wp post update $(wp post list --post_type=post --format=ids) --comment_status=closed

Turn off comments on media attachments

Attachments support comments, but the Media Library has no Bulk Edit. Since WordPress 6.4 (2023), new installs disable attachment pages: an attachment URL redirects to the file itself, so there's no page to comment on.

Sites upgraded from older versions keep attachment pages on. You can switch them off with WP-CLI, which sets the wp_attachment_pages_enabled option from 1 to 0:

wp option set wp_attachment_pages_enabled 0

The plugin and the snippet below also cover media.

Disable comments site-wide with a plugin

The free Disable Comments plugin by WPDeveloper has 1,000,000+ active installs and 4.7 stars from 281 ratings (version 2.9.1, updated October 25, 2026). It switches comments off everywhere, or only on the post types you pick: posts, pages or media.

With comments off, it also:

• hides "Comments" from the admin menu, the admin bar and the Dashboard
• hides the Discussion settings page and disables comment widgets
• disables comment RSS and Atom feeds and outgoing pingbacks, and removes the X-Pingback header
• can block comments sent through XML-RPC and the REST API

It supports WP-CLI (for example, wp disable-comments settings --types=post) and multisite networks, and it can exclude user roles. Deactivating it restores your previous comment behavior, because it filters comment status at runtime instead of rewriting your posts.

Note: The plugin says to delete existing comments before applying its settings, or some themes may keep showing them. It also says not to use it for closing comments on individual posts, since WordPress already does that.

Disable comments with a code snippet

Prefer no plugin? Add this to a child theme's functions.php file or a code snippets plugin. If you edit a parent theme's functions.php directly, the next theme update can wipe your change.

// Close comments and pings on every post type
add_filter( 'comments_open', '__return_false', 20 );
add_filter( 'pings_open', '__return_false', 20 );

// Hide existing comments in classic and block themes
add_filter( 'comments_array', '__return_empty_array', 20 );
add_filter( 'get_comments_number', '__return_zero', 20 );

// Remove comment support from every post type
add_action( 'init', function () {
	foreach ( get_post_types() as $post_type ) {
		if ( post_type_supports( $post_type, 'comments' ) ) {
			remove_post_type_support( $post_type, 'comments' );
			remove_post_type_support( $post_type, 'trackbacks' );
		}
	}
}, 100 );

// Remove the Comments menu and the admin bar icon
add_action( 'admin_menu', function () {
	remove_menu_page( 'edit-comments.php' );
}, 100 );

add_action( 'admin_bar_menu', function ( $wp_admin_bar ) {
	$wp_admin_bar->remove_node( 'comments' );
}, 100 );

The snippet closes comments and pingbacks everywhere, hides existing comments (block themes skip the Comments block when comments are closed and the count is 0), and removes the Comments menu and admin bar icon. It deletes nothing: remove it and your comments come back as they were.

If you use Notes in the block editor (WordPress 6.9 and later), test them afterward. Notes are a comment type, and the Disable Comments plugin explicitly keeps them working.

Delete the comments you already have

Closing comments doesn't remove old ones. To delete them in the dashboard:

1. Go to Comments.
2. Tick the checkbox at the top to select every comment on the page (raise the per-page number in Screen Options for big batches).
3. Choose "Move to Trash" from Bulk actions and click Apply.
4. Open the Trash view and click Empty Trash. The Spam view has an Empty Spam button.

If you leave them, WordPress permanently deletes trashed comments after 30 days. With WP-CLI, you can delete comments in one go; --force skips the Trash:

wp comment delete $(wp comment list --format=ids) --force

Tip: Back up your database first. Emptying the Trash, WP-CLI's --force and the plugin's Delete Comments tool can't be undone.

Which method should you use?

If spam is the only reason, CommentCamp lets you keep comments on, with free spam filtering and a moderation queue built in. To switch them off, match the method to the scope:

A small blog that just wants the form gone needs Settings > Discussion plus Bulk Edit. If you want comments gone from the admin too, including media on an older site, use the plugin or the snippet.