head to head · open source
hugo vs Craft CMS
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Craft CMS has 3,623 stars, 712 forks, 529 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 2,393% (90,326 vs 3,623 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| hugo | Craft CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 712 |
| 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
[Clang]: [GCC]: [Git]: [Go]: [bep]: [bugs]: [contributing]: CONTRIBUTING.md [create a proposal]: [dart sass]: [details]: [documentation repository]: [documentation]: [dragonfly bsd, freebsd, netbsd, and openbsd]: [features]: [forum]: [friends]: [hugo modules]: [installation]: [issue queue]: [linux]: [macos]: [prebuilt binary]: [requesting help]: [spf13]: [static site generator]: [support]: [themes]: [transpile sass to css]: [website]: [windows]: A fast and flexible static site generator built with love by [bep][], [spf13][], and [friends][] in Go. [Website][] [Installation][] [Documentation][] [Support][]…
About Craft CMS
About Craft CMS Craft is a flexible, user friendly CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web and beyond. It features: An intuitive, user friendly control panel for content creation and administrative tasks. A clean slate approach to content modeling that doesn’t make any assumptions about the content you need to manage. A fast and flexible templating system based on Twig. An auto generated GraphQL API for building headless applications. A powerful ecommerce platform for building bespoke ecommerce experiences. A built in Plugin Store with hundreds of free and commercial plugins. A robust extension…
read the full Craft CMS overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Content Management Systems (CMS) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Content Management Systems (CMS) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or Craft CMS more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and Craft CMS has 3,623. 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 (90,326 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.