Disqus

This Disqus review covers what Disqus is used for, its key features, Disqus pricing and ads, privacy and performance, and how it compares with other ways to run comments. Disqus hosts the comment thread for you: you paste an embed code, or install the WordPress plugin, and a comment box appears under every post. Readers log in with a Disqus account or with Google, Facebook or X (Twitter), or post as a guest if you allow it, and commenters get user profiles that follow them across sites. Comments live on Disqus servers, and you moderate them from one admin panel for all your sites. Disqus launched in 2007 as a Y Combinator startup and has been owned by Zeta Global, an ad-tech company, since December 2017.

What is Disqus used for?

Disqus is used to add comments and community discussion to a site that has no comment system of its own, or whose built-in comments are hard to moderate. Typical users are personal blogs, news and media publishers, tech and gaming sites, and documentation sites built with static site generators such as Hugo or Jekyll, which cannot store comments themselves. Publishers use Disqus comments to keep readers on the page, grow engagement, collect feedback on each article and build an audience around recurring topics. One Disqus account follows a commenter across every site that uses Disqus, so readers get replies and email notifications without registering again on each blog.

Key features

• Embedded comment threads: a single script tag or the WordPress plugin adds threaded comments to any web page; the comment count can show in post lists.
• Moderation tools: approve, edit, delete or mark comments as spam from one admin panel; review pending comments, pre-moderate new commenters, block words and users, and give trusted moderators access.
• Spam filtering: a built-in filter checks each comment right after it is posted.
• Notifications: email notifications and instant activity notifications bring commenters back when someone replies.
• Login options: Disqus accounts, social login, optional guest comments and single sign-on with your own users, available as an add-on for Business.
• Disqus Polls: embeddable polls that let readers vote and discuss a question, with their own plans, separate from Disqus comments.
• Analytics: engagement insights on paid plans show which posts and commenters drive discussion.
• Import and export: import old comments from WordPress and other systems, and export every comment to a WordPress-compatible XML file.
• Languages: the widget is translated into dozens of languages.

Disqus pricing

Disqus prices comments by monthly pageviews. The plans below come from the Disqus help center's comments pricing page (updated April 30, 2025) and match the Disqus pricing page as of September 2026.

• Basic: free and ad-supported; a top ad placement is required.
• Plus: up to 3 sites. $12 a month or $132 a year up to 100,000 monthly pageviews; $20 or $216 up to 350,000; $35 or $372 up to 900,000. Ads are optional and email support is included.
• Pro: up to 20 sites. $115 a month or $1,260 a year up to 1 million monthly pageviews; $140 or $1,500 up to 2.5 million; $180 or $1,920 up to 5 million. Adds advanced moderation, analytics, branding options, star ratings and custom reactions.
• Business: custom pricing with SSO, an account manager, unlimited API access and full branding removal.

Disqus Polls is a separate subscription: free with an ad unit, or Polls Pro from $10 a month ($9 billed annually) for up to 250,000 pageviews.

The cost surprise to check is advertising. The free Basic plan shows ads, and you cannot switch them off without paying for Plus. Note that Disqus Polls needs its own plan, even if you already pay for comments. Traffic also moves you up a tier: a site that grows past 100,000 monthly pageviews pays more, and single sign-on needs Business.

Set up Disqus comments and Disqus Polls

To add Disqus comments, register your site in the Disqus admin, choose a unique shortname and copy the universal embed code into your page template, or install the WordPress plugin. Set the comment policy, enable or disable guest comments, decide which users need pre-moderation and give moderators access to the admin. The look and feel follows your site's colors and fonts automatically, and the admin lets you customize light or dark schemes, reactions and the comment count link. Disqus Polls is set up the same way: create a poll, then embed it in an article or next to the comment thread. Upgrade to Plus to turn advertising off, and contact the Disqus support team on paid plans for help with a large number of comments or an import. Readers can subscribe to a discussion by email and visit their Disqus profile to see every thread they joined.

Ads, privacy and data on Disqus

Ads are the part of Disqus that most site owners ask about. On the free plan Disqus places ads above and below the comments, and reviews of the WordPress plugin often complain about "sponsored" links appearing on their site. Paid plans make ads optional, unlike the ad supported plans, and Disqus offers free Plus to eligible nonprofits. Monthly pageviews decide your tier, so publishers with more traffic pay more for an ad-free plan.

Privacy is the second question. Disqus loads its own scripts and cookies, and the free plan loads ad code on your page, so visitors are tracked by Disqus and its ad partners. Your privacy policy and cookie consent need to cover that. In 2021 Norway's data protection authority announced its intention to fine Disqus €2.5 million over sharing user data with advertisers without a valid legal basis (Wikipedia). Disqus also disclosed a breach in 2017 of a 2012 database snapshot with 17.5 million email addresses.

On data ownership, Disqus says "you own your data" and lets you export every comment, so leaving is possible. Comment syncing in the WordPress plugin also copies comments into your WordPress database as a backup.

Disqus performance and SEO

Disqus loads asynchronously, after the rest of the page, according to its common questions page. Page weight still grows. One developer measured over ten times the page weight and six times the requests after adding Disqus to a post (victorzhou.com, 2019, free plan with ads). Enable lazy loading, so the widget only loads when the reader scrolls to the thread, to limit how much Disqus can affect page speed. For SEO, comments add fresh text to a page, but Google and other search engines may not index comments loaded by a script, and Disqus itself says indexing is out of its hands.

Where Disqus shines — and where it falls short

Strengths:

• Adds comments to any site, including static sites, in minutes.
• Strong moderation tools and spam filtering in one panel for many sites.
• One commenter account and notifications across the Disqus network.
• Free to start, with export and WordPress sync so you are not locked in.

Trade-offs:

• The free plan shows ads you do not control.
• Third-party scripts and tracking raise privacy and consent questions.
• Adds page weight and requests, especially with ads.
• Comments live on Disqus servers; SEO value from them is uncertain.
• Single sign-on only as an add-on on the custom-priced Business plan.
• Email support only on paid plans; free users rely on the help center.

How Disqus compares

• WordPress: built-in comments stored in your own database, with no ads and no third-party script.
• Ghost: native member comments for Ghost publications, tied to paid or free members.
• Circle: a full community platform with spaces, events and courses, beyond comments under articles.
• Substack: newsletters with comments for subscribers built in.

Is Disqus worth it?

Disqus is worth it for publishers and bloggers who want comments, moderation and spam filtering without running their own system, and who either accept ads or pay for Plus to remove them. Plus from $12 a month is fair value for a small site that wants ad-free comments. It is less of a fit for privacy-focused sites, very fast static sites, or teams that need single sign-on on a budget; an open-source comment system or the platform's own comments may suit better. If you want help to add comments or a community to your site, the web agencies and developers on LowCodeDevs can take it on.

Sources

• Disqus comments pricing and plans: plans, prices, pageview tiers and ads.
• Disqus pricing: the current plans page.
• Disqus Polls pricing and plans: Polls plans and prices.
• Common questions about Disqus: SSO, spam, performance, SEO and data ownership.
• Disqus Comment System plugin: comment syncing, import and export for WordPress.
• Disqus, Wikipedia: history, ownership, security breaches and the Norwegian GDPR case.
• Why I replaced Disqus, Victor Zhou: page-weight measurement from 2019 (the author moved to Commento; the $9 cheapest paid tier he mentions is outdated, Plus now starts at $12).