head to head · open source
giscus vs laravel-comments
giscus has 12,137 GitHub stars, 482 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. laravel-comments has 602 stars, 98 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. giscus leads on adoption by 1,916% (12,137 vs 602 stars). giscus is written in TypeScript under MIT; laravel-comments is written in PHP under MIT. giscus has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, laravel-comments 16%. laravel-comments was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (comments), 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.
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Side by side
| giscus | laravel-comments | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 602 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-05-26 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 482 | ⑂ 98 |
| 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 laravel-comments if
- You want the laravel-comments feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and laravel-comments 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 laravel-comments
laravel comments is a PHP package for Laravel developers who want to attach an approval aware, nestable commenting system to their Eloquent models without building one from scratch.
read the full laravel-comments overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is giscus or laravel-comments more popular?
giscus has 12,137 GitHub stars and laravel-comments has 602. giscus has the larger community by that measure.
Are giscus and laravel-comments free?
Both are open source. giscus is licensed under MIT and laravel-comments under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between giscus and laravel-comments?
giscus is written in TypeScript and laravel-comments in PHP. 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 laravel-comments?
Choose giscus if you want the larger community (12,137 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose laravel-comments if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.