head to head · open source
gatsby vs nextra
gatsby has 55,921 GitHub stars, 10,089 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. nextra has 13,947 stars, 1,411 forks, 346 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 301% (55,921 vs 13,947 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; nextra is written in TypeScript under MIT. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, nextra 10%. gatsby was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (react, 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 | nextra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-07-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 nextra if
- You want the nextra feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and nextra 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 nextra
Nextra Simple, powerful and flexible site generation framework with everything you love from Next.js. Documentation Development Installation The Nextra repository uses PNPM Workspaces and Turborepo. 1. Run corepack enable to enable Corepack. If the command above fails, run npm install g corepack@latest to install the latest version of Corepack. 2. Run pnpm install to install the project's dependencies. Build nextra Watch mode: pnpm filter nextra dev Build nextra theme docs Development You can also debug them together with a website locally. For instance, to start examples/docs locally, run Any change to…
read the full nextra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or nextra more popular?
gatsby has 55,921 GitHub stars and nextra has 13,947. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and nextra free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and nextra under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and nextra?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and nextra 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 nextra?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,921 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nextra if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.