head to head · open source
wagtail vs decap-cms
wagtail has 20,599 GitHub stars, 4,676 forks, 1,007 open issues and last shipped yesterday. decap-cms has 19,461 stars, 3,139 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. wagtail leads on adoption by 6% (20,599 vs 19,461 stars). wagtail is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; decap-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT. wagtail has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, decap-cms 16%. wagtail was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), 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
| wagtail | decap-cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 19K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.7K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick wagtail if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 wagtail
Wagtail is an open source content management system built on Django, with a strong community and commercial support. It's focused on user experience, and offers precise control for designers and developers. 🔥 Features A fast, attractive interface for authors Complete control over front end design and structure Scales to millions of pages and thousands of editors Fast out of the box, cache friendly when you need it Content API for 'headless' sites with decoupled front end Runs on a Raspberry Pi or a multi datacenter cloud platform StreamField encourages flexible content without compromising structure Powerful…
read the full wagtail overview →
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 wagtail or decap-cms more popular?
wagtail has 20,599 GitHub stars and decap-cms has 19,461. wagtail has the larger community by that measure.
Are wagtail and decap-cms free?
Both are open source. wagtail is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and decap-cms under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wagtail and decap-cms?
wagtail is written in Python 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, wagtail or decap-cms?
Choose wagtail if you want the larger community (20,599 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose decap-cms if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.