Self-host Polis
v2.42.2AI-backed group polling for large-scale opinion mapping
- Stars
- 1 221
- Ports
- 80 (nginx reverse proxy (HTTP_PORT)), 443 (nginx reverse proxy (HTTPS_PORT)), 5000 (API server, internal / behind proxy), 8080 (static file server for the web clients), 4321 (client-participation-alpha web client)
- Requires
- PostgreSQL
What is Polis?
Polis is an open-source, AI-assisted sentiment-gathering platform from the Computational Democracy Project, built for running "conversations" with large groups: participants submit short statements and rate other people's statements as agree, disagree or pass, while a math engine sorts participants into opinion groups and surfaces statements that different groups agree on. Everyone in a conversation can watch the opinion landscape update as votes arrive, and the participation UI ships in a number of languages. Owners get an admin interface with moderation (approve, reject or leave comments unmoderated, in either a strict or a permissive scheme) plus a live report they can share by link; conversations can be dropped into your own pages with an embed code. A Python service (delphi, together with the math-python poller) does the clustering math and can produce topic names and narrative reports through Anthropic's API or a local Ollama model, while Google-based comment translation and Akismet spam filtering are switched on with API keys. Self-hosting means Docker Compose from the repo — Node.js API server, static web clients, Postgres, an nginx proxy and the Python analysis services — with separate docs for configuration, SSL and scaling; the project's own FAQ cautions that running your own instance is doable but still needs experienced cloud engineers, and the bundled self-signed certificate is meant for testing only. The hosted instance at pol.is is free for nonprofits and government.
Should you self-host Polis?
Polis scores 54/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #1 of 2 in Surveys. It has 1 221 GitHub stars.
It shipped 1 stable release in the past year. The latest, v2.42.2, came out on 25 October 2026.
Setup is advanced: plan for several services and some ongoing maintenance. It is AGPL-3.0-licensed and written mostly in Python.
Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is Digistorm (54/100). Polis scores higher overall. See Polis vs Digistorm side by side.
Features
- Admin Interface
- AI-generated topic names
- AI narrative reports
- Automated opinion clustering
- Automatic comment translationOptional; needs Google Cloud Translation credentials
- Comment Moderation
- Comment routing and prioritization
- Consensus statement detection
- Data Export
- Embeddable conversations
- Operations dashboardOff by default
- Real-time opinion visualization
- Real-time shareable report
- Spam FilteringOptional; requires an Akismet API key
- Statement-based group polling
Polis README
FAQ
How much is automatic? How much is required of people?
Once a prompt and some seed comments are set, a conversation can run fully automatically.
Are comments sent out randomly?
No — comments are routed semi-randomly, prioritising more divisive statements because they help form opinion groups.
Does Polis work in multiple languages?
Yes — the participation interface has been translated into several languages.
Does Polis scale? To what degree?
Yes; the largest conversation run so far had over 33,000 participants producing nearly 2,000,000 votes on about 1,000 comments.
Is the interface complicated for participants?
No — participants can only submit a comment or vote on comments submitted by others.
Does Polis visualize the debate as it's ongoing? Is this just for the conversation owner or for all participants?
Yes; the report updates in real time and is available to the conversation owner through the admin interface, using long-link privacy so it can be shared.
Does Polis use natural language processing (NLP)?
No — the machine-learning algorithms run only on the opinion matrix built from votes, not on the comment text.
Can I deploy my own instance of Polis? How easy is it to do that?
People have done it, but the project says it is still not easy and needs senior engineers comfortable with cloud systems.
Is Polis open source?
Yes — the repository holds the platform, and the data-science analysis notebooks are open source too.
Can I embed Polis on my site?
Yes, embedding it on your own site is the preferred way to build trust with participants.
What is Polis not?
Not a tool for picking the best idea or comparing ideas head to head, not for demographic questions, and not meant for groups smaller than roughly 50 to 100 people.
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