head to head · open source
gatsby vs htmly
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. htmly has 1,362 stars, 306 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 4,007% (55,939 vs 1,362 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; htmly is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, htmly 22%. gatsby was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (blog), 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 | htmly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-01-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 306 |
| 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 htmly if
- You want the htmly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and htmly 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 htmly
HTMLy is an open source blogging platform and flat file CMS written in PHP. It serves people who want a blog or simple website without running a database server. The project stores content in files and uses an algorithm to list material by date, type, category, tag, or author. It lives in the PHP web publishing ecosystem.
read the full htmly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or htmly more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and htmly has 1,362. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and htmly free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and htmly under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and htmly?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and htmly in PHP. 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 htmly?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose htmly if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.