head to head · open source
hugo vs vaahcms
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vaahcms has 573 stars, 25 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. hugo leads on adoption by 15,581% (89,854 vs 573 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; vaahcms is written in PHP under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, vaahcms 4%. 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 | vaahcms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 573 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 vaahcms if
- You want the vaahcms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and vaahcms 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 vaahcms
VaahCMS is an MIT licensed, Laravel based open source web application development platform shipped with a headless content management system, built for teams that want to develop applications and manage content inside one codebase rather than stitching a CMS and a Laravel project together.
read the full vaahcms 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 vaahcms more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and vaahcms has 573. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and vaahcms free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and vaahcms under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and vaahcms?
hugo is written in Go and vaahcms 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 vaahcms?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose vaahcms if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.