Total PR Comments Received

Last updated: October 27, 2026

Total PR Comments Received counts the comments other people left on your contributors' merged pull requests (PRs). Span uses this count to calculate Comments received / PR. It doesn't appear as a metric of its own, and there is no "comments received per week" metric. This article covers the count and how it feeds the per-PR average.

Why it matters

  • Review engagement: shows how much discussion code gets before it ships.

  • Context for Comments received / PR: a change in the average can come from more comments or from fewer PRs. Compare the average with Total PRs Merged to tell which.

  • Author-side view: it describes feedback that authors receive, not feedback reviewers give. For the reviewer side, use Comments authored / week.

How it works

Total PR Comments Received = sum of comments from others on merged PRs in the period
Comments received / PR     = Total PR Comments Received ÷ Total PRs merged

  1. For each PR, Span counts every comment left on it, except comments by the PR's author, comments by bots and dev agents, comments by ignored Git usernames, and deleted comments.

  2. Span keeps merged PRs whose author is marked Contributor, outside ignored repositories and branches.

  3. Each PR lands in the period of its merge date, together with all of its comments, whenever they were written.

  4. A team or person view credits the PR's author, not the commenters.

What counts as a comment: on GitHub, conversation comments, inline review comments, and the summary text of a submitted review. On GitLab and Azure DevOps, non-system notes and comments.

Where to find it: the per-PR average, Comments received / PR, is on Insights > Productivity > Quality > Code review, and in team and person Code review tabs and custom dashboards, with a percentile rank.

Setup

  1. Connect your version control system.

  2. Under Settings > Metrics, add bot or service accounts to Ignore Git Usernames if their comments shouldn't count, and add repositories or branches to ignore.

  3. Make sure people who write code are marked Contributor in Settings > People management.

Things to know

  • Worked example. Three PRs merge this week with 0, 4, and 8 comments from reviewers. Total PR Comments Received is 12, and Comments received / PR is 12 ÷ 3 = 4.0. The PR with no comments still counts in the denominator.

  • Merged PRs only. Comments on open, closed-unmerged, and reverted PRs don't count.

  • Past periods can rise. A comment added to an old PR after it merged raises that PR's count in the month it merged.

  • Time off doesn't matter here. Comments on any day count, including the commenter's out-of-office days.

  • Ignore PR Comments phrases don't apply. The Settings > Metrics > Ignore PR Comments setting doesn't remove comments from this count. To drop a bot's comments, add its account to Ignore Git Usernames.

  • Span counts more than GitHub's header. GitHub's comment count shows conversation comments only. Span adds inline comments and review summaries.

  • Higher isn't always better. Many comments can mean thorough review, unclear PRs, or heavy rework. Read it with PR Review Cycles and PR cycle time.

Related articles

Comments Received / PR Report

Comments Authored / Week

PR Review Cycles

Need help?

Contact your Span account team or reach out to support@span.app.