head to head · open source
gatsby vs lektor
gatsby has 55,921 GitHub stars, 10,089 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. lektor has 3,949 stars, 320 forks, 251 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 1,316% (55,921 vs 3,949 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; lektor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, lektor 8%. lektor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | lektor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 320 |
| 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 lektor if
- You want the lektor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and lektor 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 lektor
Lektor [![CI/CD Badge]][CI/CD] [CI/CD Badge]: [CI/CD]: Lektor is a static website generator. It builds out an entire project from static files into many individual HTML pages and has a built in admin UI and minimal desktop app. To see how it works look at the top level example/ folder, which contains a showcase of the wide variety of Lektor's features. For a more complete example look at the lektor/lektor website repository, which contains the source code for the official Lektor website. How do I use this? For installation instructions head to the official documentation: Installation Quickstart Want to develop…
read the full lektor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or lektor more popular?
gatsby has 55,921 GitHub stars and lektor has 3,949. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and lektor free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and lektor under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and lektor?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and lektor in Python. 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 lektor?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,921 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lektor if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.