FastComments alternative: pricing and features compared for 2026
FastComments is one of the best hosted comment systems you can buy: ad-free, fast, and unusually deep on features. It is also usage-billed after a 30-day trial, and the bill for a multi-site publisher adds up faster than the $0.99 headline suggests. Here is the honest comparison, with a worked example bill.
If you are looking for a FastComments alternative, you probably like FastComments. It is ad-free, it does not track readers, the widget is light, and the feature list goes on for a page: live chat, single sign-on, webhooks, ratings, 27 interface languages. The reasons people look elsewhere are narrower: every plan is paid after the 30-day trial, and the Flex plan's per-site and per-load meters make the bill hard to predict for a publisher with several properties.
This post compares FastComments with EchoThread on the things that decide the choice: what you pay at realistic traffic, how each handles spam, and what you give up either way. We build EchoThread, so treat our claims as claims and check the side-by-side comparison for the full row-by-row table.
FastComments pricing, as published
From FastComments' traffic pricing and pricing calculator pages, read on 3 September 2026:
- Flex: $0.99 a month minimum, "only pay for what you use". Included: 50,000 page loads, 1,000 comments stored, 100 SSO users, the first domain. Then $1 per 100,000 page loads, $1 per 100,000 comments stored, $1 per 1,000 SSO users, $10 a month per additional site, $5 per moderator, $10 per additional admin. Usage that would exceed a limit is blocked, which caps the bill. Monthly only.
- For Creators: $5.99 a month, up to three sites, with a yearly option.
- Pro: $99 a month.
- Trial: 30 days, no card required, on every plan.
Flex includes the customisable widget, API and SSO access, white-labelling and branding removal from the first dollar, which is generous; on most competitors those are mid-tier features.
A worked example bill
Take a small publisher with three sites and 300,000 page loads a month across them, one moderator besides the owner.
| FastComments Flex | FastComments Creators | EchoThread Starter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | $0.99 | $5.99 | $9.00 |
| Two extra sites | $20.00 | included (up to 3) | included (3 sites) |
| 250,000 loads beyond the included 50,000 | $2.50 | not stated on the calculator | page views: 100,000 allowance per site on sites created from 1 October 2026 |
| One moderator seat | $5.00 | not stated | included (5 seats, every plan) |
| Monthly | $28.49 | $5.99 plus any usage | $9.00 |
Two caveats, both in FastComments' favour. The Creators plan is clearly the right FastComments plan for this publisher, and its page-load ceiling is not shown on the calculator, so it may cover this case at $5.99. And Flex's blocking-at-the-limit behaviour means the bill never runs away; it just means comments stop loading. On EchoThread, Starter's page-view allowance is soft: cross it and you get an email, not a blocked widget, and any site created before 1 October 2026 is not metered on page views at all.
Spam handling
Both products filter spam automatically, so this is not a case where one leaves you exposed. FastComments uses a Bayesian classifier with an LLM second pass. EchoThread uses a first-party machine-learning classifier, Siftfy, that scores every comment as it is posted, guest or signed in, and was built specifically for fluent AI-generated spam rather than the keyword-stuffed kind. One design difference worth knowing: on EchoThread a high score alone sends a comment to your queue, and auto-hiding also needs a corroborating signal such as a link or a promo pattern. That rule exists because early on the model was too confident about non-English comments; the Korean-language incident and the fix are written up honestly.
Where FastComments wins
It has the broadest feature set of any hosted comment system we compare against: live chat and direct messages, ratings and surveys, SSO and webhooks on every plan, widget localisation in 27 languages against EchoThread's four, and server-side rendering options for SEO. If you need community tooling beyond comments, or your audience spans many languages, FastComments is the better product and this post will not talk you out of it.
Where EchoThread wins
- A permanent free plan. Hobby is free, not a 30-day trial: one site, unlimited comments, no ads, no card.
- Flat, predictable pricing. Three sites and 100,000 page views are $9 a month, whatever your moderator count.
- Seats are free. Five team seats on every plan, including Hobby, with Moderator-only roles from Pro. FastComments Flex bills $5 per moderator.
- Import from Disqus in one step, and export everything as JSON or CSV at any time.
- Guest comments with a spam score. Readers comment without an account and the filter still runs on every one.
EchoThread's Hobby plan is free for your first site: unlimited comments, no ads, no reader tracking, and 10,000 page views a month on sites created from 1 October 2026 (a site created before that date keeps unmetered page views). Paid plans start at $9 a month for three sites and 100,000 page views; see pricing for the full ladder.
Switching from FastComments
FastComments exports comments as CSV. EchoThread's JSON import takes a list of threads, each with a page URL and its comments (author, body, timestamp, optional parent), so a CSV-to-JSON pass is a short script; replies map through the parent field. Then swap the embed: FastComments' fastcomments-widget div and script for EchoThread's div#echothread and script, keeping the page URL as the identifier so imported threads line up. There are platform-specific snippets for Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll and Astro, and an official Publii plugin.
Prices were read from fastcomments.com on 3 September 2026 and will change; the calculator on their site is the authority for your own numbers.
Discussion
Comments
This thread runs on EchoThread — the same widget you would add to your own site.