head to head · open source
hugo vs frappe
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. frappe has 10,791 stars, 5,327 forks, 2,003 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 733% (89,854 vs 10,791 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; frappe is written in Python under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, frappe 49%. frappe 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 | frappe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 5.3K |
| 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 frappe if
- You want the frappe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and frappe 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 frappe
Frappe Framework is a full stack, low code web framework written in Python and JavaScript, licensed under MIT. It runs on the server side on Python and MariaDB, and it ships with a tightly integrated client side library that handles the browser layer of an application. The project sits in the Python and JavaScript web development ecosystem, and it has been developed for roughly fifteen years, with its first work beginning in 2005 and its repository now holding over ten thousand stars and more than five thousand forks.
read the full frappe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or frappe more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and frappe has 10,791. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and frappe free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and frappe under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and frappe?
hugo is written in Go and frappe in Python. 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 frappe?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose frappe if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.