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Which comment system does my site use, and what would switching from Disqus change?

Paste the address of a page that has comments. The scanner fetches that one page, tells you which comment system it embeds — Disqus, Hyvor Talk, FastComments, Commento, Cusdis, Giscus, utterances or WordPress's own — and lines it up against EchoThread on page weight, annual cost, ads, tracking, features and export.

We fetch that one page once, read its HTML and store nothing about you. Results are kept for 24 hours.

Short answer

You can tell which comment system a page uses from the script it loads: Disqus pages load embed.js from a disqus.com address, Giscus loads giscus.app/client.js, and WordPress's built-in comments post to wp-comments-post.php. Switching from Disqus to EchoThread removes Disqus's ads and third-party trackers, replaces its widget with one that is under 65 KB gzipped, and brings your existing comments across with a one-step import of the Disqus export file.

What the scanner checks

  • The comment system. It looks for each product's published embed code in the page's HTML.
  • Third-party scripts in the HTML. It lists the other domains the page's own script tags load from. Scripts that those load later, as Disqus's embed does with its ad and tracking code, are not visible in the HTML and are not counted.
  • The comparison. The rows come from the same audited table as our comparison pages, with a source for every competitor cell.

It fetches public web pages only, and at most 10 scans an hour from one visitor. Pages behind a login, or that only build their comment section after a click, may show as "no known comment system".

Switching from Disqus in three steps

  1. Export from Disqus. Download your comments as the XML file Disqus provides from its admin.
  2. Import into EchoThread. Old threads are matched to the right page URLs, so existing discussions show up where they were.
  3. Swap the snippet. Replace the Disqus embed with the EchoThread snippet. See the platform guides and the full EchoThread vs Disqus comparison.

Questions

How can I tell which comment system a website uses?
Look at the scripts the page loads. Disqus loads embed.js from a disqus.com address, Hyvor Talk loads from talk.hyvor.com, FastComments from cdn.fastcomments.com, Commento from cdn.commento.io, Giscus from giscus.app and utterances from utteranc.es. WordPress's own comments post to wp-comments-post.php. The scanner on this page checks for all of them.
Does Disqus slow down my site?
Disqus loads its own widget plus advertising and tracking scripts on its free tier, which adds requests and weight to every page with comments. EchoThread's widget is under 65 KB gzipped and loads no ads or trackers.
Can I keep my Disqus comments if I switch?
Yes. Export your comments from Disqus as XML and import the file into EchoThread in one step; threads are matched to their page URLs. You can export everything back out as JSON or CSV at any time.
What does the scanner store?
The address you scanned and the result, for 24 hours, so a repeat scan does not fetch the page again. Nothing about you is stored, and scans are limited to 10 an hour per visitor.