head to head · open source
hugo vs Umbraco-CMS
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped today. Umbraco-CMS has 5,251 stars, 2,922 forks, 525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 1,611% (89,858 vs 5,251 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Umbraco-CMS is written in C# under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Umbraco-CMS 56%. 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.
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Side by side
| hugo | Umbraco-CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 2.9K |
| 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 Umbraco-CMS if
- You want the Umbraco-CMS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and Umbraco-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 Umbraco-CMS
Umbraco CMS is a free and open source .NET content management system, released under the MIT licence, for .NET developers and editorial teams who need to build and operate content managed websites on infrastructure they control.
read the full Umbraco-CMS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or Umbraco-CMS more popular?
hugo has 89,858 GitHub stars and Umbraco-CMS has 5,251. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and Umbraco-CMS free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Umbraco-CMS under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and Umbraco-CMS?
hugo is written in Go and Umbraco-CMS in C#. 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 Umbraco-CMS?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,858 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Umbraco-CMS if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.