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Pricing

Simple pricing. Free for personal sites, forever.

Pay only when you outgrow Hobby. No per-seat fees, no engagement surcharges, and soft usage limits with warning emails.

Pro is $19/mo — about a fifth of Disqus Pro, and unlike Disqus there are no ads on your free tier.

No credit card for Hobby Reply emails included free Warning emails before limit issues Spam-filtered comments do not count

Our promise

The Hobby tier is free for personal sites, forever — not a trial, and no credit card required. We'll never paywall a site you've already set up out from under you. No rug-pulls. Sites created before 1 October 2026 keep unmetered page views, on whatever plan they are on. Every account also gets Starter's features free for its first 14 days — no card, and when they end you are simply back on Hobby with nothing deleted.

EchoThread is designed around EU consent standards and avoids the third-party cookies that major browsers increasingly restrict — so the same plan works for hobby blogs and EU-regulated publishers.

1

Start here

Hobby is for proving fit

Use it for one personal site, a side project, or a private beta before you have real comment volume.

2

First paid step

Starter is for live growth

Pick Starter when your blog, docs, or changelog has repeat readers and you want more sites and traffic headroom.

3

Scale up

Pro and Business are for teams

Move up when you need more sites or unlimited page views. Enterprise is only about contracts and procurement — Business already has no ceilings.

Hobby

For personal sites and side projects.

Best if you are validating EchoThread on one site.

$0/month
  • 1 site
  • Unlimited comments
  • 10,000 page views/month on sites created from 1 October 2026 (earlier sites stay unmetered)
  • Every core commenting feature we build: threading, reactions, image uploads, link previews, ML spam filter, moderation dashboard, theming and data export
  • Your own moderation rules alongside the filter: a restricted-words list, ban or trust for individual commenters, and auto-closing threads on older posts
  • Passkey, Google, GitHub, X and Facebook commenter sign-in
  • Reply email notifications for commenters
  • "Powered by EchoThread" footer
  • Starter's features free for your first 14 days, no card
  • Community support
Get started free

Starter

For growing blogs and docs sites.

Best first paid plan for active blogs and documentation.

$9/month

Everything in Hobby, plus:

  • 3 sites instead of 1
  • 100,000 page views/month (10× Hobby)
  • Webhooks for comment and thread events, plus personal API tokens for the public read/moderate API
  • Per-site analytics dashboard: page views and comments over time, with a top-threads list
  • Remove "Powered by EchoThread" footer
  • Self-serve billing portal

Everything in Hobby carries forward — upgrading only adds capabilities, it never takes any away.

Pro

Popular

For serious indie publishers.

Best for multi-site publishers that need real traffic headroom.

$19/month

Everything in Starter, plus:

  • 10 sites instead of 3
  • 1,000,000 page views/month (10× Starter)
  • Shared-secret SSO — your backend signs commenters in automatically, no separate login
  • Restrict any of your 5 team seats to a Moderator role — review and act on comments without touching billing or site settings
  • Custom widget subdomain — give each site its own hostname on our zone, like yoursite.echothread.io, instead of the shared api.echothread.io / cdn.echothread.io. You pick the name and it is live immediately, with no DNS to set up.

Everything in Starter carries forward — upgrading only adds capabilities, it never takes any away.

Business

For high-traffic publications.

Best for teams with traffic spikes and multiple publication properties.

$79/month

Everything in Pro, plus:

  • Unlimited sites (fair-use)
  • Unlimited page views
  • Audit log: who did what across moderation, settings, credential, and entitlement actions
  • Data retention controls: keep comments forever, or auto-delete after 2 years, 1 year, or 90 days

Everything in Pro carries forward — upgrading only adds capabilities, it never takes any away.

Enterprise

Same product as Business. Different paperwork.

Best when contracts or procurement need custom handling — not when you need more capacity.

Custom

Everything in Business, plus:

  • Custom contracts and payment terms
  • Procurement and security review support
  • Account-level onboarding
  • Custom support terms

Same features and same limits as Business — only the paperwork changes.

Switching from Disqus or WordPress?

Import your existing comments from a Disqus or WordPress (WXR) export in one step. Your old threads light up in EchoThread within minutes — no broken anchors, no orphan replies.

Import guide

Compare every feature

Hobby is a full comment system, free forever — threading, moderation, and spam filtering are never paywalled. Starter and above add operational controls: webhooks, the public API, an analytics dashboard, and removing our footer.

Comments are unlimited on every plan. Page views are a soft allowance on sites created on or after 1 October 2026 — we email you at 90% and again if you go over, and nothing breaks — and every site created before that date keeps unmetered page views. The site count is a hard cap; upgrade to add more sites.

SSO, on Pro and above, is shared-secret: your own backend HMAC-signs a small identity payload and hands it to the widget, so a visitor lands signed in as themselves with no separate EchoThread login. It is not an OIDC or SAML integration — there is no identity-provider connection to configure.

Every plan includes 5 team seats, including Hobby — invite teammates for free no matter what you're on. Seat count never changes by tier. What Pro and above add is the ability to restrict a seat to a Moderator role that can review and act on comments without touching billing or site settings, instead of every teammate holding full Owner access.

Custom widget subdomain, on Pro and above, gives each site its own hostname on our zone — yoursite.echothread.io instead of the shared api.echothread.io / cdn.echothread.io. You pick the name in your dashboard and it is live immediately: there is no DNS to add, no ownership record to prove, and nothing for our team to activate. It is a hostname on echothread.io, not a domain of your own — we do not serve the widget from a domain you bring.

The owner-side moderation controls are free on every plan, Hobby included. A restricted-words list holds up to 2,000 entries and is checked against the comment body and the commenter's display name before the spam filter runs, so your own rule decides first — you choose whether a match is held for review or rejected outright, and a display-name match is always held rather than rejected. Ban and trust are your standing on one person on one site: a ban stops them posting there and never follows them anywhere else, and trust auto-approves their comments — though never past a word you set to reject outright. Both are yours to undo, and moderators can use them too. Auto-close stops new comments on a thread 30, 60, 90, 180, or 365 days after the discussion started — existing comments stay visible, and turning the setting off reopens the threads.

Business and Enterprise add two operational controls the smaller tiers don't need: an audit log that records who did what on a site — moderation actions (comment approvals, rejections, and deletions), settings changes (site settings, webhooks, and team seat roles), credential actions (personal API token creation and revocation, SSO secret rotation), and entitlement changes — and data retention controls to choose how long comments stick around before automatic deletion: forever (the default on every plan today), 2 years, 1 year, or 90 days.

FeatureHobbyStarterProBusinessEnterprise
Sites1310UnlimitedCustom
Comments/monthUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimitedCustom
Page views/month (sites created from 1 Oct 2026)10K100K1MUnlimitedCustom
Team seats55555
Webhooks & public API access
Analytics dashboard
SSO (shared-secret)
Restrict a seat to Moderator-only
Custom widget subdomain
Threading & reactions
Image uploads & link previews
Bold / italic / spoiler markdown
ML spam filter (Siftfy)
Moderation dashboard
Restricted words (up to 2,000, with wildcards)
Ban or trust a commenter, per site
Auto-close threads (30 / 60 / 90 / 180 / 365 days)
Reply email notifications
Passkey sign-in (WebAuthn)
Widget theming
Data export (JSON/CSV)
Google, GitHub, X, Facebook, or guest commenting
Remove "Powered by EchoThread" footer
Self-serve billing (Stripe Customer Portal)
Audit log (moderation, settings, credential & entitlement actions)
Data retention controls (forever / 2yr / 1yr / 90 days)
Custom contracts
Custom usage limits

Pricing questions

What happens if I exceed my limits?
Comments are unlimited on every plan, so there is nothing to exceed there. Page views are a soft allowance on sites created on or after 1 October 2026: we email you at 90% of the monthly allowance and again if you go over, and nothing is hidden, throttled or deleted in the meantime. Every site created before that date keeps unmetered page views for as long as it exists. You can see exactly where each of your sites stands on your billing page at any time. The site count, however, is a hard cap: if you try to create more sites than your plan allows you will be asked to upgrade first.
Business is already unlimited. What is Enterprise for?
How you buy, not what you get. Business has unlimited sites and comments, so Enterprise adds no capacity — it exists for custom contracts and payment terms, procurement and security review, account-level onboarding, and negotiated support terms. If none of those apply to you, Business is the top of the ladder.
Can I downgrade?
Yes, anytime. Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing cycle. If your usage exceeds the new tier's limits, we'll email you with options before anything breaks.
Do you charge for spam-filtered comments?
No. Comments are unlimited on every plan, and the spam filter has no effect on what you pay.
What is the 14-day Starter trial?
Every account holds Starter's features — no "Powered by EchoThread" footer, per-site analytics, and webhooks with API tokens — for its first 14 days, starting the first time you open the dashboard. No card, no subscription, nothing to cancel. When it ends you are back on Hobby: the footer returns and analytics lock again, but nothing is deleted and your site keeps working. The trial lends features only; the site count and page-view allowance stay those of your plan. One trial per account.
Are reply email notifications free?
Yes. Reply email notifications are included on Hobby because they help commenters return to the discussion. Paid plans are for more sites, more usage headroom, brand removal, and team or support needs.
Refund policy?
Cancel any time from the Stripe billing portal. If you need a refund on an unused portion of the current month or year, email us and we will review it promptly.
I joined before launch. Does my free Hobby plan change?
No. Early adopters who joined before launch keep the Hobby tier free for life on every site they had at launch — even if Hobby limits change later. New sites added after launch follow current pricing.
Which sites get a page-view allowance?
Only sites created on or after 1 October 2026. Every site created before that date keeps unmetered page views for as long as it exists, on any plan. A site added after that date follows its plan's allowance: 10,000 page views a month on Hobby, 100,000 on Starter, 1,000,000 on Pro, and unlimited on Business. It is a soft allowance — we email you, nothing breaks.
Why no annual-only plans?
Annual is a discount, not a requirement. Indie buyers shouldn't have to commit a year up-front to get fair pricing. Pick what works.

Start on Hobby. Upgrade when you outgrow it.

Hobby is free for your first site, forever. No credit card required.

Get started free