head to head · open source
hugo vs gatsby
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped today. gatsby has 55,939 stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped today. hugo leads on adoption by 61% (89,858 vs 55,939 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, gatsby 18%. gatsby was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (static-site-generator), 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 | gatsby | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 56K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 10K |
| 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 gatsby if
- You want the gatsby feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and gatsby 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 gatsby
Gatsby is a free and open source, React based framework for building websites and applications, released under the MIT license and written primarily in JavaScript. It combines the control and scalability of dynamically rendered sites with the speed of static site generation, and it sits in the JavaScript and React ecosystem as a static site generator, a compiler, and a GraphQL driven build tool. The project has been developed for roughly eleven years, carries 55,939 stars and 10,117 forks on GitHub, and currently has 450 open issues.
read the full gatsby overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or gatsby more popular?
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars and gatsby has 55,939. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and gatsby free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gatsby under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and gatsby?
hugo is written in Go and gatsby in JavaScript. 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 gatsby?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,858 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gatsby if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.