Commento vs Schnack
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted forums & community options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Commento
Privacy-friendly embeddable discussion widget
VS
Schnack
Lightweight self-hosted commenting system
| Feature | Commento | Schnack |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 24 · At risk | 16 · At risk |
| Category | Forums & Community | Forums & Community |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Go | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,779 | ★ 1,811 |
| First released | 2017 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Disqus, Facebook Comments | Disqus, Facebook Comments |
What are Commento and Schnack?
Commento
Commento is a privacy-friendly, embeddable discussion and comment widget that lets website owners add threaded conversations to any page. It supports moderation, voting, and avoids third-party trackers.
- Embeddable comment widget
- No tracking by default
- Voting and threading
- Moderation dashboard
Schnack
Schnack is a lightweight, self-hosted commenting system that website owners embed to host discussions without third-party trackers. It uses social login for moderation and stores comments in SQLite.
- Embeddable comment widget
- Social login moderation
- SQLite storage
- No tracking
Commento vs Schnack: key differences
Commento is written in Go, while Schnack is built with JavaScript. Commento has the considerably larger community, at 3,779 GitHub stars versus 1,811. Commento lists first-class Docker deployment; Schnack does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Commento if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.8k GitHub stars)
Choose Schnack if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Active community (1.8k GitHub stars)
- Written in JavaScript
Frequently asked questions
Is Commento or Schnack better?
Neither is universally better. Commento has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Commento and Schnack free and open-source?
Yes. Commento is licensed under MIT and Schnack under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Commento and Schnack with Docker?
Commento: yes. Schnack: check the project docs for container support.