head to head · open source
gatsby vs publify
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. publify has 1,853 stars, 3,627 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gatsby leads on adoption by 2,919% (55,939 vs 1,853 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; publify is written in Less under MIT. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, publify 196%. publify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | publify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Less |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 3.6K |
| 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 publify if
- You want the publify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Less
- You evaluated both and publify 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 publify
Publify is a self hosted web publishing platform built on Ruby on Rails. It is the project formerly known as Typo, and it provides a blogging engine plus a small message system connected to Twitter.
read the full publify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or publify more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and publify has 1,853. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and publify free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and publify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and publify?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and publify in Less. 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 publify?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose publify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.