Remark42
Self-hosted comment engine that adds threaded discussions to any site with no trackers, no ads, and no third-party scripts loaded on your readers.
Reviewed by Marco Wollank
Best Disqus Alternatives in 2026
4 private alternatives, vetted against our public criteria.
Disqus is the comment widget most sites paste in without reading the bill, and the bill is your readers. The script it loads behaves like a tracker: it records the people who visit, profiles them from their address and browser, and follows them across every other site running the same widget, all while adding heavy third-party requests to the page and showing ads you pay to remove. The systems below add the same discussion without watching anyone.
giscus
Comment widget that stores every thread as a GitHub Discussion, so there is no server to run and no ad scripts or tracking cookies loaded on your readers.
Isso
The classic self-hosted Disqus replacement: a small Python server on a SQLite file that adds comments with no tracking and no third-party scripts.
Cusdis
A tiny open-source comment widget that uses no cookies and needs no reader sign-in, with a self-hosted option and a hosted one for sites that do not want to run a server.
Why settings won’t fix Disqus. The tracking is not a misconfiguration, it is the product. A free comment widget has to make money somewhere, and Disqus makes it by collecting data on your visitors and serving ads against your pages. That means there is no toggle that turns your readers back into private people, because doing so would remove the revenue. You can pay for a plan that hides the ads, but the third-party script still loads, still profiles the visitors, and still ties them to the same cross-site identity. The honest move is not to tune the widget but to replace it with software whose business is not your audience.
What actually matters in a comment system. Two questions sort the field. Where do the comments live, and what does the widget load onto the page? A self-hosted engine like Remark42 or Isso keeps every thread on a server you control and loads nothing but its own small script, so your readers are never profiled and the data is yours to move. giscus takes a different route: it stores comments as GitHub Discussions, which means no server for you to run, at the cost of asking each commenter for a GitHub login. All of them drop the trackers and the ads, which is the entire reason to leave. Past that, the choice comes down to two things: whether you want to host the data yourself on a server you run, and whether your readers should be able to reply without first creating an account somewhere.
How to switch. Export your existing comments from the Disqus admin so you keep your history. Pick one of the systems on our private comment systems page and decide where it will live: a small container on a server you run, or a repository you already own. Add its one script tag where the Disqus embed sat, run the importer on your export, and check the threads on a staging copy before you go live. Then delete the Disqus embed so its scripts stop loading on your pages. The whole move is usually an afternoon, and most of that is reading the new engine’s setup notes once. From that point your comment section does one job, hosting a conversation, and the people in it are no longer the price of admission. Your pages also load lighter, since the heavy widget and its tracking requests are gone for good.
Frequently asked
- Why is Disqus bad for privacy?
- Disqus loads third-party scripts on every page that runs it, and those scripts track your visitors, build a pseudonymous profile of them, and follow them onto other sites with the same widget. It also shows ads unless you pay to remove them. The tracking is how the free service is funded, so it is not a setting you can disable.
- Is there a free alternative to Disqus?
- Yes. Every pick here is open source and free to run. Some, like giscus, cost nothing beyond a service you already have, while the self-hosted ones cost only the small server you point them at. None charges to remove ads, because none shows ads.
- What is the lightest replacement for Disqus?
- Disqus can add a megabyte of data and dozens of requests to a page. The alternatives here load a few kilobytes and no trackers, so a tiny widget like Cusdis or a static-friendly engine like giscus will make most pages noticeably faster than the widget you are removing.
- Can I move my Disqus comments to a new system?
- Often, yes. Export your comments from the Disqus admin first, then run the importer that several of these engines provide, Isso among them. Check the migrated threads on a staging copy before you swap the script tag so nothing is lost in the move.
- Do readers need an account to comment without Disqus?
- Usually not. Most of these systems let people comment anonymously or with just an email, so you drop the sign-up wall entirely. The exception is giscus, which stores comments in GitHub and therefore asks for a GitHub login, a fit for technical readers rather than a general audience.