head to head · open source
hugo vs jekyll
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jekyll has 51,745 stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 75% (90,326 vs 51,745 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, jekyll 20%. hugo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (blog-engine, 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 | jekyll | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 52K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-13 |
| 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 jekyll if
- You want the jekyll feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and jekyll 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 jekyll
Jekyll [ ][ruby gems] [ ][ci workflow] [ruby gems]: [ci workflow]: [appveyor]: Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator perfect for personal, project, or organization sites. Think of it like a file based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories. Philosophy Jekyll does what you tell it to do — no more, no less. It doesn't try to outsmart…
read the full jekyll overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or jekyll more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and jekyll has 51,745. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and jekyll free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and jekyll under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and jekyll?
hugo is written in Go and jekyll in Ruby. 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 jekyll?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose jekyll if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.