head to head · open source
gatsby vs actions-gh-pages
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. actions-gh-pages has 5,362 stars, 450 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 943% (55,939 vs 5,362 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; actions-gh-pages is written in TypeScript under MIT. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, actions-gh-pages 8%. gatsby was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (gatsby, static-site-generator), 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
| gatsby | actions-gh-pages | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 450 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gatsby if
- You weight community size — 56K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick actions-gh-pages if
- You want the actions-gh-pages feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and actions-gh-pages fits your workflow better
About gatsby
Gatsby is a free and open source, React based framework for building websites and applications, released under the MIT license and written primarily in JavaScript. It combines the control and scalability of dynamically rendered sites with the speed of static site generation, and it sits in the JavaScript and React ecosystem as a static site generator, a compiler, and a GraphQL driven build tool. The project has been developed for roughly eleven years, carries 55,939 stars and 10,117 forks on GitHub, and currently has 450 open issues.
read the full gatsby overview →
About actions-gh-pages
This project is a GitHub Action that deploys static files to GitHub Pages. It lives in the GitHub Actions ecosystem, is written in TypeScript, and is distributed under the MIT license. The action takes a build output directory from a workflow and publishes its contents to a branch that GitHub Pages serves, so a repository can go from committed source to a live site without any manual upload step. It is designed to pair with static site generators rather than to replace them, and the topic list names Hugo, MkDocs, Gatsby, mdBook, Next, Nuxt, and VuePress among the tools it is used alongside.
read the full actions-gh-pages overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or actions-gh-pages more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and actions-gh-pages has 5,362. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and actions-gh-pages free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and actions-gh-pages under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and actions-gh-pages?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and actions-gh-pages 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, gatsby or actions-gh-pages?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose actions-gh-pages if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.