Commento vs Utterances
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
Utterances
Comments widget powered by GitHub issues
| Feature | Commento | Utterances |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 24 · At risk | 29 · At risk |
| Category | Forums & Community | Forums & Community |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Go | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,779 | ★ 9,696 |
| First released | 2017 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Disqus, Facebook Comments | Disqus |
What are Commento and Utterances?
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
Utterances
Utterances is a lightweight commenting widget that uses GitHub issues as the storage backend, embeddable in any static website. Visitors comment with their GitHub accounts and threads stay in the repository.
- Comments via GitHub issues
- No backend database
- Embeddable widget
- Lightweight
Commento vs Utterances: key differences
Commento is written in Go, while Utterances is built with TypeScript. Utterances is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Commento. Utterances has the considerably larger community, at 9,696 GitHub stars versus 3,779. Commento lists first-class Docker deployment; Utterances 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 Utterances if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Mature project with 9.7k GitHub stars
- Written in TypeScript
Frequently asked questions
Is Commento or Utterances better?
Neither is universally better. Utterances has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Commento and Utterances free and open-source?
Yes. Commento is licensed under MIT and Utterances under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Commento and Utterances with Docker?
Commento: yes. Utterances: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, Commento or Utterances?
Utterances has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Commento. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.