head to head · open source
giscus vs pretty
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars, 481 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. pretty has 624 stars, 29 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. giscus leads on adoption by 1,841% (12,110 vs 624 stars). giscus is written in TypeScript under MIT; pretty is written in Clojure under Apache-2.0. giscus has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, pretty 5%. pretty was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | pretty | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 624 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-05-26 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 481 | ⑂ 29 |
| 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 pretty if
- You want the pretty feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You evaluated both and pretty 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 pretty
pretty is an Apache 2.0 Clojure library, published on Clojars as org.clj commons/pretty, that formats exception output, ANSI fonts and binary data so developers can read console and REPL output more easily.
read the full pretty overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is giscus or pretty more popular?
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars and pretty has 624. giscus has the larger community by that measure.
Are giscus and pretty free?
Both are open source. giscus is licensed under MIT and pretty under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between giscus and pretty?
giscus is written in TypeScript and pretty in Clojure. 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 pretty?
Choose giscus if you want the larger community (12,110 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pretty if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.