head to head · open source
giscus vs wp-discourse
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars, 481 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. wp-discourse has 544 stars, 114 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. giscus leads on adoption by 2,126% (12,110 vs 544 stars). giscus is written in TypeScript under MIT; wp-discourse is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. giscus has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, wp-discourse 21%. wp-discourse 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 | wp-discourse | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 544 |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-05-26 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 481 | ⑂ 114 |
| 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 wp-discourse if
- You want the wp-discourse feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and wp-discourse 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 wp-discourse
WP Discourse is a WordPress plugin that acts as an interface between a WordPress site and a Discourse community. It lives in the WordPress plugin ecosystem and is written in PHP, distributed under the GPL 3.0 license. The plugin does not install or bundle Discourse itself; a Discourse forum must already exist before the integration will work. The two applications communicate through the Discourse API, which means the blog and the forum can run on separate servers, and the project documentation strongly recommends hosting them separately because their hosting requirements differ considerably.
read the full wp-discourse overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is giscus or wp-discourse more popular?
giscus has 12,110 GitHub stars and wp-discourse has 544. giscus has the larger community by that measure.
Are giscus and wp-discourse free?
Both are open source. giscus is licensed under MIT and wp-discourse under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between giscus and wp-discourse?
giscus is written in TypeScript and wp-discourse 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 wp-discourse?
Choose giscus if you want the larger community (12,110 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose wp-discourse if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.