head to head · open source
hugo vs ponzu
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponzu has 5,759 stars, 383 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. hugo leads on adoption by 1,468% (90,326 vs 5,759 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ponzu is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, ponzu 7%. 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 | ponzu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-11-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 383 |
| 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 ponzu if
- You want the ponzu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ponzu 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 ponzu
[!WARNING] This project is currently abandoned, if you're looking for an open source HTTP Server with built in SSL/TLS support, feel free to try out Caddy Server. a project [!NOTE] If you're interested in regularly contributing to Ponzu CMS (with monetary compensation included) feel free to reach out to us at support@zerossl.com Ponzu Watch the video introduction Ponzu is a powerful and efficient open source HTTP server framework and CMS. It provides automatic, free, and secure HTTP/2 over TLS (certificates obtained via Let's Encrypt), a useful CMS and scaffolding to generate content editors, and a fast HTTP API…
read the full ponzu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or ponzu more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and ponzu has 5,759. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and ponzu free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ponzu under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and ponzu?
hugo is written in Go and ponzu in Go. 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 ponzu?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ponzu if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.