head to head · open source
hugo vs decap-cms
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. decap-cms has 19,461 stars, 3,139 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 364% (90,326 vs 19,461 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; decap-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, decap-cms 16%. hugo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cms, content-management-system), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| hugo | decap-cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 19K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick hugo if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick decap-cms if
- You want the decap-cms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and decap-cms fits your workflow better
About hugo
[Clang]: [GCC]: [Git]: [Go]: [bep]: [bugs]: [contributing]: CONTRIBUTING.md [create a proposal]: [dart sass]: [details]: [documentation repository]: [documentation]: [dragonfly bsd, freebsd, netbsd, and openbsd]: [features]: [forum]: [friends]: [hugo modules]: [installation]: [issue queue]: [linux]: [macos]: [prebuilt binary]: [requesting help]: [spf13]: [static site generator]: [support]: [themes]: [transpile sass to css]: [website]: [windows]: A fast and flexible static site generator built with love by [bep][], [spf13][], and [friends][] in Go. [Website][] [Installation][] [Documentation][] [Support][]…
About decap-cms
Documentation: decapcms.org A CMS for static site generators. Give teams a simple way to edit and add content to any site built with a static site generator. Decap CMS is the new name of Netlify CMS since February 2023. Join us on Discord for community chat. How It Works Decap CMS is a single page app that you pull into the /admin part of your site. It presents a clean UI for editing content stored in a Git repository. You setup a YAML config to describe the content model of your site, and typically tweak the main layout of the CMS a bit to fit your own site. When a user navigates to /admin/ they'll be prompted…
read the full decap-cms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or decap-cms more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and decap-cms has 19,461. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and decap-cms free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and decap-cms under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and decap-cms?
hugo is written in Go and decap-cms in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, hugo or decap-cms?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose decap-cms if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.