head to head · open source
giscus vs roadmap
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars, 481 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. roadmap has 569 stars, 119 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. giscus leads on adoption by 2,028% (12,110 vs 569 stars). giscus is written in TypeScript under MIT; roadmap is written in PHP under MIT. giscus has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, roadmap 21%. roadmap was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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 | roadmap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 569 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-05-26 | 2026-09-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 481 | ⑂ 119 |
| 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 roadmap if
- You want the roadmap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and roadmap 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 roadmap
Roadmap is an MIT licensed, self hosted roadmapping application built in PHP on the Laravel framework, aimed at teams that want to run a public feature request board and publish a roadmap on their own infrastructure.
read the full roadmap overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is giscus or roadmap more popular?
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars and roadmap has 569. giscus has the larger community by that measure.
Are giscus and roadmap free?
Both are open source. giscus is licensed under MIT and roadmap under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between giscus and roadmap?
giscus is written in TypeScript and roadmap 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 roadmap?
Choose giscus if you want the larger community (12,110 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose roadmap if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.