head to head · open source
hugo vs sveltia-cms
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars, 8,447 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sveltia-cms has 3,031 stars, 230 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 2,880% (90,326 vs 3,031 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sveltia-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, sveltia-cms 8%. 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, 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 | sveltia-cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 230 |
| 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 sveltia-cms if
- You want the sveltia-cms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and sveltia-cms 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 sveltia-cms
Sveltia CMS Sveltia CMS is a leading Git based headless CMS for Jamstack sites. It’s open source, free, and a complete modern rewrite of Netlify CMS, now known as Decap CMS, which has been neglected for years. Designed for content editors and developers alike, Sveltia CMS delivers a great UX/DX, powerful features, and first class internationalization (i18n) support — all in a small, maintenance free, single page web application served from a CDN. Its generic purpose approach makes it suitable for a wide range of projects, from personal blogs and portfolios to marketing sites and knowledge bases. As the de facto…
read the full sveltia-cms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or sveltia-cms more popular?
hugo has 90,326 GitHub stars and sveltia-cms has 3,031. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and sveltia-cms free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sveltia-cms under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and sveltia-cms?
hugo is written in Go and sveltia-cms in JavaScript. 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 sveltia-cms?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (90,326 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sveltia-cms if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.