head to head · open source
hugo vs joomla-cms
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. joomla-cms has 5,165 stars, 3,887 forks, 928 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 1,649% (90,326 vs 5,165 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; joomla-cms is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, joomla-cms 75%. joomla-cms 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| hugo | joomla-cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 5.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| 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 joomla-cms if
- You want the joomla-cms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and joomla-cms 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 joomla-cms
Joomla! CMS™ ==================== Build Status Overview This is the source of Joomla! 5.x. Joomla's Official website. Joomla! 5.4 version history. Detailed changes are in the changelog. What is Joomla? Joomla! is a Content Management System (CMS) which enables you to build websites and powerful online applications. It is a simple and powerful web server application which requires a server with PHP and either MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL to run. You can find full technical requirements here. Joomla! is free and Open Source software distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. Looking for…
read the full joomla-cms overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Content Management Systems (CMS) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Content Management Systems (CMS) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or joomla-cms more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and joomla-cms has 5,165. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and joomla-cms free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and joomla-cms under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and joomla-cms?
hugo is written in Go and joomla-cms in PHP. 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 joomla-cms?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose joomla-cms if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.