head to head · open source
hugo vs textpattern
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. textpattern has 880 stars, 110 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 10,111% (89,854 vs 880 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; textpattern is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, textpattern 13%. 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 | textpattern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 880 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 110 |
| 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 textpattern if
- You want the textpattern feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and textpattern 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 textpattern
Textpattern is a free and open source content management system written in PHP that installs on a web server with PHP and MySQL, and it is aimed at people who want to publish and organise web content on infrastructure they control.
read the full textpattern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or textpattern more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and textpattern has 880. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and textpattern free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and textpattern under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and textpattern?
hugo is written in Go and textpattern 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 textpattern?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose textpattern if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.