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Artalk vs Talkyard: catalog facts
Artalk	Talkyard
Best for: Site owners who want a feature-rich comment section they host themselves	Best for: Teams and communities wanting a Q&A forum with idea voting
Free Free and open source under the MIT license.	Free + paid options Self-hosting is free; the hosted service offers a free trial.
Self-hosted	Web, Self-hosted
Lightweight client that works with any framework Built-in moderation, captcha and spam filtering All 4 strengths for Artalk Lightweight client that works with any framework Built-in moderation, captcha and spam filtering Manages several sites from one installation One-step Docker deployment	Combines forum, Q&A, idea voting and blog comments in one tool Optional anonymous comments All 3 strengths for Talkyard Combines forum, Q&A, idea voting and blog comments in one tool Optional anonymous comments Tags with values for sorting and filtering
Much of the community discussion is in Chinese Requires running and maintaining your own server	Chat features are basic Documentation is incomplete All 3 limitations for Talkyard Chat features are basic Documentation is incomplete Some listed features are only partly implemented
Self-hosted	Self-hosted, Hosted service
Open source	Open source
License: MIT	License: AGPL-3.0
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Sources for Artalk artalk.js.org github.com/ArtalkJS/Artalk Catalog checked October 2, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Sources for Talkyard talkyard.io github.com/debiki/talkyard Catalog checked October 2, 2026

“Not stated” means we have not confirmed it. Features can vary by device and plan.