head to head · open source
gatsby vs elm-pages
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped today. elm-pages has 692 stars, 102 forks, 81 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 7,984% (55,939 vs 692 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; elm-pages is written in Elm under BSD-3-Clause. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, elm-pages 15%. gatsby was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (blog, 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 | elm-pages | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 692 |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | Elm |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-05-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 102 |
| 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 elm-pages if
- You want the elm-pages feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Elm
- You evaluated both and elm-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 elm-pages
elm pages elm pages is a framework for building an Elm single page app that is able to seamlessly interface with data from an Elm Backend. elm pages is a hybrid framework, allowing you to define Routes that are either server rendered (for more dynamic content with user specific or request specific data) or pre rendered at build time (for generating static HTML files that are hosted through a CDN). You can mix and match server rendered and pre rendered routes in your app. elm pages also has a command for running pure Elm scripts with a single command. See the elm pages Scripts docs page. What's new in 12.2 Tui — b…
read the full elm-pages overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or elm-pages more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and elm-pages has 692. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and elm-pages free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and elm-pages under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and elm-pages?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and elm-pages in Elm. 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 elm-pages?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose elm-pages if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.