head to head · open source
gatsby vs kit
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kit has 9,721 stars, 2,954 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 475% (55,939 vs 9,721 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; kit is written in HTML under MIT. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, kit 30%. 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 | kit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| 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 kit if
- You want the kit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and kit 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 kit
HugoBlox (listed in this registry as kit) is a free, MIT licensed static site framework that turns a plain English description into AI generated pages while keeping every page as Markdown you own, built for academics, researchers, developers, and small teams who need professional landing pages, portfolios, blogs, publications, and documentation without a database or a paid site builder.
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or kit more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and kit has 9,721. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and kit free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and kit under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and kit?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and kit in HTML. 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 kit?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.