head to head · open source
hugo vs alchemy_cms
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped today. alchemy_cms has 905 stars, 324 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 9,829% (89,858 vs 905 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; alchemy_cms is written in Ruby under BSD-3-Clause. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, alchemy_cms 36%. hugo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cms, content-management-system), 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
| hugo | alchemy_cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 905 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 324 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick hugo if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick alchemy_cms if
- You want the alchemy_cms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and alchemy_cms fits your workflow better
About hugo
Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that renders a complete site in seconds, often less, and it is aimed at developers, technical writers, and content teams who build blogs, documentation sites, portfolios, landing pages, and corporate sites as static files.
About alchemy_cms
AlchemyCMS Alchemy is an open source CMS engine written in Ruby on Rails. Read more about Alchemy on the website and in the guidelines. [!CAUTION] This main branch is a development branch that can contain bugs. For productive environments you should use the current Ruby gem version, or the latest stable branch (8.0 stable). 🏆 Main sponsor ✅ Features Flexible templating that separates content from markup A rich RESTful API Intuitive admin interface with live preview Multi language and multi domain Page versioning SEO friendly urls User Access Control Build in contact form mailer Attachments and downloads On the f…
read the full alchemy_cms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or alchemy_cms more popular?
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars and alchemy_cms has 905. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and alchemy_cms free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and alchemy_cms under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and alchemy_cms?
hugo is written in Go and alchemy_cms 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, hugo or alchemy_cms?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,858 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose alchemy_cms if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.