head to head · open source
giscus vs django-comments-xtd
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars, 481 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. django-comments-xtd has 622 stars, 159 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. giscus leads on adoption by 1,847% (12,110 vs 622 stars). giscus is written in TypeScript under MIT; django-comments-xtd is written in HTML under BSD-2-Clause. giscus has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, django-comments-xtd 26%. django-comments-xtd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (comments, javascript, reactjs), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| giscus | django-comments-xtd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 622 |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-05-26 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 481 | ⑂ 159 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick giscus if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick django-comments-xtd if
- You want the django-comments-xtd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and django-comments-xtd fits your workflow better
About giscus
giscus is an open source, MIT licensed commenting system powered by GitHub Discussions that lets visitors leave comments and reactions on a website through their existing GitHub accounts.
read the full giscus overview →
About django-comments-xtd
django comments xtd is a pluggable Django application that adds threaded, moderated comments to a Django project, and it is intended for Django developers and teams who want a self hosted comment system inside their own application rather than a hosted third party service.
read the full django-comments-xtd overview →
More in Community & Social
Related comparisons
More Collaboration & Feedback projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Collaboration & Feedback field.
Frequently asked questions
Is giscus or django-comments-xtd more popular?
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars and django-comments-xtd has 622. giscus has the larger community by that measure.
Are giscus and django-comments-xtd free?
Both are open source. giscus is licensed under MIT and django-comments-xtd under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between giscus and django-comments-xtd?
giscus is written in TypeScript and django-comments-xtd in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, giscus or django-comments-xtd?
Choose giscus if you want the larger community (12,110 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose django-comments-xtd if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.