head to head · open source
hugo vs qor
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. qor has 5,343 stars, 686 forks, 61 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 1,582% (89,854 vs 5,343 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; qor is written in Go under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, qor 13%. hugo was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cms, go), 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 | qor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 686 |
| 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 qor if
- You want the qor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and qor 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 qor
QOR is a set of libraries written in Go that abstracts the common features needed for business applications, content management systems, and e commerce systems. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is published under the MIT license. The project is a complete rewrite in Go of the original QOR, which was a proprietary framework written in Ruby on Rails and used internally at The Plant, and version 1.0 is the first release to be open sourced.
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or qor more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and qor has 5,343. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and qor free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and qor under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and qor?
hugo is written in Go and qor 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 qor?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose qor if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.