head to head · open source
hugo vs Twill CMS
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Twill CMS has 3,975 stars, 589 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. hugo leads on adoption by 2,160% (89,854 vs 3,975 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Twill CMS is written in PHP under Apache-2.0. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Twill CMS 15%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| hugo | Twill CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 589 |
| 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 Twill CMS if
- You want the Twill CMS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Twill 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 Twill CMS
Twill is an open source CMS toolkit and Laravel package. It helps developers create a custom admin console for content management. The project lives in the Laravel ecosystem and uses Vue.js for the interface. It is intended for modern publishing needs, where developers need an intuitive and flexible admin console without building every standard feature from scratch.
read the full Twill CMS 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 Twill CMS more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and Twill CMS has 3,975. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and Twill CMS free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Twill CMS under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and Twill CMS?
hugo is written in Go and Twill CMS 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 Twill CMS?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Twill CMS if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.