Disqus
by Disqus · Hosted comments, polls and moderation for publisher websites
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Disqus
Homepage
Overview
Disqus is a hosted comments system that publishers embed on their own websites, with a separate Polls product that can be used standalone. It adds moderation tooling, audience analytics and monetisation options including advertising inside the comment embed. Pricing is based on monthly pageviews, measured by how often the embed loads.
- Best for
- Publishers who want a hosted comments and polls system embedded on their own site
- Pricing
- Free ad-supported plan for eligible sites, then Plus at $20/month ($18/month billed annually) and Pro at $140/month ($125/month billed annually), with custom pricing for Business
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Comments, polls, moderation and analytics in one embed
- AI moderation, advanced analytics and priority support on Pro
- 30-day free trial on Comments Plus, Comments Pro and Polls Pro
- Free ad-supported plan for sites that meet eligibility rules
Trade-offs
- Priced by monthly pageviews, so cost rises as traffic grows
- Plus caps moderator seats at 3; AI moderation only starts at Pro
- SSO and Disqus branding removal need the custom-priced Business plan
- Cancellation is by email only, and free trials require a payment method
How Disqus markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Disqus’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“Enhance Engagement with Disqus”
- Angle: Outcome / benefit-led
- Hero: Product screenshot
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Disqus’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Customer sentiment
Third-party ratings, shrunk toward the catalogue mean by review volume and corroborated across independent sources.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
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Where this comes from
The Disqus pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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Is this your product?
Claim Disqus to manage its profile. Claiming lets you suggest edits to the descriptive fields — it never changes scores or rankings.