head to head · open source
hugo vs Statamic
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Statamic has 4,913 stars, 652 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 1,739% (90,326 vs 4,913 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Statamic is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Statamic 13%. Statamic was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cms, content-management-system), 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 | Statamic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 652 |
| 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 Statamic if
- You want the Statamic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Statamic 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 Statamic
About Statamic Statamic is the flat first, Laravel + Git powered CMS designed for building beautiful, easy to manage websites. [!NOTE] This repository contains the code for the core Statamic Composer package, to be installed into an existing Laravel application. The [application repository][app repo] is where you can find a Laravel application preconfigured with Statamic, which is used when creating a new project via the Statamic CLI tool. Learning Statamic Statamic has extensive [documentation][docs]. We dedicate a significant amount of time and energy every day to improving them, so if something is unclear…
read the full Statamic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or Statamic more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and Statamic has 4,913. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and Statamic free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Statamic has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between hugo and Statamic?
hugo is written in Go and Statamic 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 Statamic?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Statamic if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.