head to head · open source
Ghost vs bridgetown
Ghost has 55,658 GitHub stars, 12,130 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bridgetown has 1,376 stars, 133 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. Ghost leads on adoption by 3,945% (55,658 vs 1,376 stars). Ghost is written in TypeScript under MIT; bridgetown is written in Ruby under MIT. Ghost has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, bridgetown 10%. Ghost 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
| Ghost | bridgetown | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 133 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ghost if
- You weight community size — 56K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bridgetown if
- You want the bridgetown feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and bridgetown fits your workflow better
About Ghost
Ghost.org • Forum • Docs • Contributing • Twitter [!NOTE] Love open source? We're hiring! Ghost is looking staff engineers to join the team and work with us full time The easiest way to get a production instance deployed is with our official Ghost(Pro) managed service. It takes about 2 minutes to launch a new site with worldwide CDN, backups, security and maintenance all done for you. For most people this ends up being the best value option because of how much time it saves — and 100% of revenue goes to the Ghost Foundation; funding the maintenance and further development of the project itself. So you’ll be…
read the full Ghost overview →
About bridgetown
Bridgetown Bridgetown is a next generation, progressive site generator & fullstack framework, powered by Ruby. Bridgetown takes your local content and external data loaded from APIs; renders templates in Markdown, ERB, and many other formats; automatically compiles frontend assets via esbuild; and exports a complete website ready to be served by fast CDNs like Render or traditional web servers. Bridgetown also integrates closely with Roda for fullstack, dynamic web application functionality—but only when and where you need it. Sponsor Bridgetown Development 🙏 Your direct financial assistance is greatly…
read the full bridgetown overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ghost or bridgetown more popular?
Ghost has 55,658 GitHub stars and bridgetown has 1,376. Ghost has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ghost and bridgetown free?
Both are open source. Ghost is licensed under MIT and bridgetown under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ghost and bridgetown?
Ghost is written in TypeScript and bridgetown in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ghost or bridgetown?
Choose Ghost if you want the larger community (55,658 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose bridgetown if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.