head to head · open source
Ghost vs nanoc
Ghost has 55,658 GitHub stars, 12,130 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nanoc has 2,159 stars, 250 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Ghost leads on adoption by 2,478% (55,658 vs 2,159 stars). Ghost is written in TypeScript under MIT; nanoc is written in Ruby under MIT. Ghost has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, nanoc 12%. 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 | nanoc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 56K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 250 |
| 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 nanoc if
- You want the nanoc feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and nanoc 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 nanoc
Nanoc Nanoc is a flexible static site generator written in Ruby. See the Nanoc web site for more information. Contributions are greatly appreciated! Consult the guidelines for information on how you can contribute. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to Nanoc in one way or another: Abubakar Ango, Ale Muñoz, Alexander Groß, Alexander Mankuta, Andy Drop, Antar, Antonio Terceiro, Arnau Siches, Ben Armston, Bil Bas, Brian Candler, Bruno Dufour, Cédric Boutillier, Chris Burkhardt, Chris Chapman, Chris Eppstein, Christian Plessl, Colin Barrett, Colin Seymour, Croath Liu, Damien Mathieu, Damien Pollet, Dan…
read the full nanoc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ghost or nanoc more popular?
Ghost has 55,658 GitHub stars and nanoc has 2,159. Ghost has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ghost and nanoc free?
Both are open source. Ghost is licensed under MIT and nanoc under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ghost and nanoc?
Ghost is written in TypeScript and nanoc 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 nanoc?
Choose Ghost if you want the larger community (55,658 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nanoc if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.