head to head · open source
decap-cms vs Instatic
decap-cms has 19,461 GitHub stars, 3,139 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Instatic has 9,047 stars, 868 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. decap-cms leads on adoption by 115% (19,461 vs 9,047 stars). decap-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT; Instatic is written in TypeScript under MIT. decap-cms has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Instatic 10%. decap-cms was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cms, static), 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
| decap-cms | Instatic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 868 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick decap-cms if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Instatic if
- You want the Instatic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Instatic fits your workflow better
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 →
About Instatic
Instatic Own your site. Love building it. A self hosted CMS where the visual editor, content engine, and publisher all live in one Bun server — and the pages it ships are clean enough to read in view source. One Click Deploy · Quick Start · Docs · Plugins · Roadmap Watch the introductory video about Instatic on YouTube. A modern website usually means assembling a stack: a headless CMS, a framework, a host, a form service, an analytics vendor, an image CDN — each with its own bill, dashboard, and 2 a.m. outage. Instatic is the opposite bet. One Bun server holds the whole thing — the canvas editor, the content…
read the full Instatic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is decap-cms or Instatic more popular?
decap-cms has 19,461 GitHub stars and Instatic has 9,047. decap-cms has the larger community by that measure.
Are decap-cms and Instatic free?
Both are open source. decap-cms is licensed under MIT and Instatic under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between decap-cms and Instatic?
decap-cms is written in JavaScript and Instatic in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, decap-cms or Instatic?
Choose decap-cms if you want the larger community (19,461 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Instatic if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.