head to head · open source
hugo vs daptin
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. daptin has 1,896 stars, 122 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 4,639% (89,854 vs 1,896 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; daptin is written in Go under LGPL-3.0. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, daptin 6%. hugo 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
| hugo | daptin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 122 |
| 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 daptin if
- You want the daptin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and daptin 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 daptin
Daptin is a self hosted application server built in Go. It lives in the backend as a service and headless CMS ecosystem, and it organizes behavior around schema files that describe records, fields, relationships, validation, and optional flags. Each configured table becomes a permission aware JSON:API resource at /api/{entity}, and the server attaches identity, files, automation, integrations, realtime delivery, metering, and protocol surfaces around that runtime.
read the full daptin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or daptin more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and daptin has 1,896. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and daptin free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and daptin under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and daptin?
hugo is written in Go and daptin in Go. 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 daptin?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose daptin if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.