head to head · open source
hugo vs Instatic
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Instatic has 9,047 stars, 868 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 898% (90,326 vs 9,047 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Instatic is written in TypeScript under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Instatic 10%. hugo 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 | Instatic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 868 |
| 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 Instatic if
- You want the Instatic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Instatic 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 Instatic
Instatic Own your site. Love building it. A self hosted CMS where the visual editor, content engine, and publisher all live in one Bun server — and the pages it ships are clean enough to read in view source. One Click Deploy · Quick Start · Docs · Plugins · Roadmap Watch the introductory video about Instatic on YouTube. A modern website usually means assembling a stack: a headless CMS, a framework, a host, a form service, an analytics vendor, an image CDN — each with its own bill, dashboard, and 2 a.m. outage. Instatic is the opposite bet. One Bun server holds the whole thing — the canvas editor, the content…
read the full Instatic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or Instatic more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and Instatic has 9,047. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and Instatic free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Instatic under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and Instatic?
hugo is written in Go and Instatic in TypeScript. 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 Instatic?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Instatic if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.