Comments for static sites: CommentCamp, giscus and more

How comments work on a static site

A static site is plain HTML with no server of its own to receive a comment form, so the comments have to live somewhere else. With Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Next.js or Eleventy, you have four main options:

• Hosted embeds: services like CommentCamp, Disqus and Hyvor Talk handle storage, logins and moderation for you.
• GitHub-backed widgets: giscus and utterances store comments in your repository's Discussions or Issues.
• Self-hosted servers: Remark42, Isso and Comentario run on your own server and pair a small script with their own database.
• Git commits and webmentions: Staticman commits comments into your repo, and webmentions collect links from other sites.

For the general walkthrough, see how to add comments to a website.

Hosted embeds: CommentCamp, Disqus and Hyvor Talk

Hosted embeds skip the server and the GitHub login. Prices are as of October 2026.

• CommentCamp: $0 for site owners, with no ads, unlimited comments and replies, automated spam filtering and one reader account across sites. It's funded by optional member Pro and will launch with a universal embed script for any HTML or CMS-backed site plus an official WordPress plugin. It's in private early access with a waitlist.
• Disqus: free Basic plan with required ads; ad-free Plus is $12/month, or $11/month billed yearly, for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews. Hugo has a built-in partial: add {{ partial "disqus.html" . }} to a template and set services.disqus.shortname.
• Hyvor Talk: no free plan, a 14-day trial, then EUR 5/month billed yearly at EUR 50 for 1 site and 2,500 credits a month (1 credit per embed load). No ads.

Disclosure: CommentCamp is our product.

giscus: comments in GitHub Discussions

giscus is "A comments system powered by GitHub Discussions." It's open source (MIT), had 12,189 GitHub stars as of October 2026, and promises "No tracking, no ads, always free." There's no database: readers sign in with GitHub to comment, or reply on the GitHub Discussion directly, and you moderate on GitHub.

Setup takes three things: a public repository, the giscus app installed on it, and Discussions turned on. giscus.app recommends an Announcements-type category, so only maintainers and giscus can start new discussions.

Enter your repository and category on giscus.app, and it fills in data-repo-id and data-category-id for this snippet, which goes in your layout or comment section template:

<script src="https://giscus.app/client.js"
        data-repo="[ENTER REPO HERE]"
        data-repo-id="[ENTER REPO ID HERE]"
        data-category="[ENTER CATEGORY NAME HERE]"
        data-category-id="[ENTER CATEGORY ID HERE]"
        data-mapping="pathname"
        data-strict="0"
        data-reactions-enabled="1"
        data-emit-metadata="0"
        data-input-position="bottom"
        data-theme="preferred_color_scheme"
        data-lang="en"
        crossorigin="anonymous"
        async>
</script>

By default, giscus maps each page to a discussion by pathname; URL, title, og:title, a specific term or a discussion number also work. If no discussion exists yet, the giscus bot creates one with the first comment or reaction.

For component frameworks, use the official wrappers: @giscus/react (React and Preact), @giscus/vue, @giscus/svelte, @giscus/solid, or the giscus web component. You can also self-host giscus with your own GitHub App.

Tip: Add a giscus.json file with an "origins" list to your repository root to control which domains can load your discussions. Moving from utterances or gitalk? Convert the old GitHub issues into discussions.

Self-hosted: Remark42, Isso and Comentario

If your readers don't have GitHub accounts, run your own server. All three are free, open source (MIT) and among the best free comment systems for static sites.

• Remark42 (Go, v1.18.0 released October 11, 2026, 5,638 GitHub stars): "No external databases, everything embedded in a single data file." It runs in Docker or as one executable, serves several sites from one instance, supports social, email or anonymous login, imports Disqus and WordPress comments, and says "There is no tracking of any sort."
• Isso (Python and SQLite, 0.14.0 released March 26, 2026, 5,310 GitHub stars): anonymous comments with no accounts, a client of about 65 kB (20 kB gzipped), and Disqus and WordPress importers.
• Comentario (PostgreSQL or SQLite, v3.19.0 released October 16, 2026): a <comentario-comments> tag, a 20 KB gzipped embed with no tracking scripts, pixels or ads, anonymous, local, social or OIDC login, and Disqus, WordPress and Commento importers.

Staticman, webmentions and utterances

Staticman (MIT) commits each comment as a data file into your site's Git repository, so comments rebuild with the site and readers need no account. It's dormant, though: the last release was in 2016, the last code push was April 24, 2024, and the public API returned errors in October 2026, so you'd have to run your own instance.

Webmention, a W3C Recommendation since January 12, 2017, notifies your site when another site links to a page, and you can show those mentions as responses. webmention.io is a hosted receiver you sign in to with your own website (IndieAuth); it publishes no price.

Note: utterances (MIT, 9,701 GitHub stars) stores comments as GitHub Issues, but it has never published a release and its code was last pushed on August 15, 2024. Cusdis is gone: its repository is archived, its README says "Cusdis is deprecated now," and cusdis.com was offline in October 2026.

Static site comment systems compared

What to use on Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Next.js and Eleventy

CommentCamp's universal embed script is built for any HTML site, so it will drop into each of these as one script tag in your base layout.

• Hugo: "Hugo ships with an embedded Disqus partial," per its docs (updated October 10, 2026), which also list giscus, Isso, Remark42, Comentario, Staticman and utterances among the open-source options.
• Jekyll: the Minimal Mistakes theme (4.28.1) has built-in support for Disqus, Discourse, Facebook, utterances, giscus and Staticman, plus a custom option, though the Facebook option no longer shows comments since Meta retired the plugin.
• Astro and Next.js: neither ships a comments feature, so use @giscus/react, the giscus web component or any script-tag embed.
• Eleventy: add a script-tag embed to your layout, or use a community plugin such as eleventy-plugin-webmentions, which fetches mentions from webmention.io.
• GitHub Pages: any client-side embed works, and giscus keeps both your site and your comments on GitHub.

Get early access to CommentCamp

CommentCamp gives independent publishers free comments and community spaces, with full data exports on the roadmap. It's in private early access: join the CommentCamp waitlist and we'll email your invite as rollout expands.