head to head · open source
hugo vs sulu
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sulu has 1,364 stars, 372 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 6,522% (90,326 vs 1,364 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sulu is written in PHP under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, sulu 27%. sulu 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 | sulu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 372 |
| 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 sulu if
- You want the sulu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and sulu 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 sulu
Sulu is a highly extensible open source PHP content management system based on the Symfony framework. Sulu is developed to deliver robust multi lingual and multi portal websites while providing an intuitive and extensible administration interface to manage the full content lifecycle. Have a look at the official Sulu website for a comprehensive list of Sulu's features, core values and use cases. This repository contains the core framework of the Sulu content management system . The framework implements the functionality that is built into the Sulu content management system and therefore is a dependency of all…
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or sulu more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and sulu has 1,364. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and sulu free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sulu under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and sulu?
hugo is written in Go and sulu 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 sulu?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sulu if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.