head to head · open source
hugo vs joomla-cms
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. joomla-cms has 5,137 stars, 3,867 forks, 928 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 1,649% (89,854 vs 5,137 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.
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Side by side
| hugo | joomla-cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| 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
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 joomla-cms
Joomla! CMS is a free, open source content management system written in PHP that lets people build websites and online applications, and this repository is the source code home of the Joomla! 5.x line for developers, integrators, and site builders.
read the full joomla-cms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or joomla-cms more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and joomla-cms has 5,137. 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 (89,854 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.