head to head · open source
gatsby vs lektor
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lektor has 3,948 stars, 319 forks, 251 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 1,317% (55,939 vs 3,948 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%. gatsby 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 319 |
| 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 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 lektor
Lektor is a static website generator written in Python that builds an entire project from static files into many individual HTML pages and ships with a built in admin UI and a minimal desktop app, intended for people who want content management without running a database backed CMS.
read the full lektor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or lektor more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and lektor has 3,948. 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 (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lektor if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.