head to head · open source
gatsby vs react-snap
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. react-snap has 5,117 stars, 396 forks, 192 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. gatsby leads on adoption by 993% (55,939 vs 5,117 stars). gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT; react-snap is written in JavaScript under MIT. gatsby has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, react-snap 8%. 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 | react-snap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-02-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 396 |
| 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 react-snap if
- You want the react-snap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and react-snap 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 react-snap
react snap is a JavaScript tool that pre renders a single page application into static HTML. It operates in the npm and JavaScript ecosystem as a framework agnostic prerendering utility, and it gives SPAs generated markup that search engines and social crawlers can read from static HTML.
read the full react-snap overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gatsby or react-snap more popular?
gatsby has 55,939 GitHub stars and react-snap has 5,117. gatsby has the larger community by that measure.
Are gatsby and react-snap free?
Both are open source. gatsby is licensed under MIT and react-snap under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gatsby and react-snap?
gatsby is written in JavaScript and react-snap in JavaScript. 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 react-snap?
Choose gatsby if you want the larger community (55,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose react-snap if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.