head to head · open source
hugo vs terminusdb
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terminusdb has 3,417 stars, 153 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 2,530% (89,854 vs 3,417 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; terminusdb is written in Prolog under Apache-2.0. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, terminusdb 4%. hugo 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| hugo | terminusdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Prolog |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 153 |
| 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 terminusdb if
- You want the terminusdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Prolog
- You evaluated both and terminusdb 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 terminusdb
TerminusDB is a distributed, collaborative database designed for building, sharing, versioning, and reasoning on structured data. It lives in the open source database and headless content management ecosystem as a system of record for JSON and JSON LD documents. The project connects documents into a semantic knowledge graph while keeping an immutable history.
read the full terminusdb overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Content Management Systems (CMS) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Content Management Systems (CMS) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or terminusdb more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and terminusdb has 3,417. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and terminusdb free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and terminusdb under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and terminusdb?
hugo is written in Go and terminusdb in Prolog. 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 terminusdb?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose terminusdb if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.