head to head · open source
hugo vs sveltia-cms
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sveltia-cms has 2,845 stars, 212 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 3,058% (89,854 vs 2,845 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 7%. sveltia-cms 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 | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 212 |
| 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
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 sveltia-cms
Sveltia CMS is Git based headless CMS for Jamstack sites. It is open source, MIT licensed, JavaScript single page web application served from CDN. Registry metadata lists JavaScript, MIT license, 2,837 stars, 208 forks, and four year repository age. Project positions itself as complete modern rewrite of Netlify CMS, now Decap CMS, and as successor to Netlify/Decap CMS. It targets content editors and developers.
read the full sveltia-cms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or sveltia-cms more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and sveltia-cms has 2,845. 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 (89,854 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.