head to head · open source
hugo vs Craft CMS
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Craft CMS has 3,608 stars, 705 forks, 529 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 2,390% (89,854 vs 3,608 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Craft CMS is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Craft CMS 20%. Craft CMS was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), 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 | Craft CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 705 |
| 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 Craft CMS if
- You want the Craft CMS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Craft 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 Craft CMS
Craft CMS is a content management system written in PHP for building custom digital experiences on the web and beyond. It lives in the PHP ecosystem and is distributed as a self hosted application, with official documentation covering templates, GraphQL, installation, and extension development.
read the full Craft CMS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or Craft CMS more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and Craft CMS has 3,608. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and Craft CMS free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Craft CMS has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between hugo and Craft CMS?
hugo is written in Go and Craft CMS in PHP. 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 Craft CMS?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Craft CMS if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.