head to head · open source
hugo vs ponzu
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponzu has 5,757 stars, 384 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. hugo leads on adoption by 1,461% (89,854 vs 5,757 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2025-11-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 384 |
| 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
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 ponzu
Ponzu is an open source, BSD 3 Clause licensed HTTP server framework and headless CMS written in Go that serves an automatic JSON API and obtains its own TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt, aimed at developers who need a fast content backend for web and mobile apps rather than a page rendering website builder.
read the full ponzu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or ponzu more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and ponzu has 5,757. 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 (89,854 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.