head to head · open source
gatsby vs Ghost
gatsby has 55,921 GitHub stars, 10,089 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. Ghost has 55,658 stars, 12,130 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gatsby leads on adoption by 0% (55,921 vs 55,658 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; Ghost is written in TypeScript under MIT. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, Ghost 22%. Ghost was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Ghost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 56K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 12K |
| 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 Ghost if
- You want the Ghost feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Ghost fits your workflow better
About gatsby
Gatsby The future of web development is here. Gatsby is a free and open source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing fast websites and apps. It combines the control and scalability of dynamically rendered sites with the speed of static site generation, creating a whole new web of possibilities. Quickstart · Tutorial · Plugins · Starters · Showcase · Contribute Support: Discussions Gatsby helps professional developers efficiently create maintainable, highly performant, content rich websites. Load Data From Anywhere. Gatsby pulls in data from any data source, whether it’s Markdown files, a…
read the full gatsby overview →
About Ghost
Ghost.org • Forum • Docs • Contributing • Twitter [!NOTE] Love open source? We're hiring! Ghost is looking staff engineers to join the team and work with us full time The easiest way to get a production instance deployed is with our official Ghost(Pro) managed service. It takes about 2 minutes to launch a new site with worldwide CDN, backups, security and maintenance all done for you. For most people this ends up being the best value option because of how much time it saves — and 100% of revenue goes to the Ghost Foundation; funding the maintenance and further development of the project itself. So you’ll be…
read the full Ghost overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or Ghost more popular?
gatsby has 55,921 GitHub stars and Ghost has 55,658. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and Ghost free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and Ghost under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and Ghost?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and Ghost 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 Ghost?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,921 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Ghost if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.