head to head · open source
jekyll vs actions-gh-pages
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. actions-gh-pages has 5,371 stars, 447 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 863% (51,745 vs 5,371 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; actions-gh-pages is written in TypeScript under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, actions-gh-pages 8%. actions-gh-pages was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (static-site-generator), 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
| jekyll | actions-gh-pages | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 447 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick jekyll if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick actions-gh-pages if
- You want the actions-gh-pages feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and actions-gh-pages fits your workflow better
About jekyll
Jekyll [ ][ruby gems] [ ][ci workflow] [ruby gems]: [ci workflow]: [appveyor]: Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator perfect for personal, project, or organization sites. Think of it like a file based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories. Philosophy Jekyll does what you tell it to do — no more, no less. It doesn't try to outsmart…
read the full jekyll overview →
About actions-gh-pages
GitHub Pages Action [!NOTE] See also the GitHub official GitHub Pages Action first. GitHub Pages now uses Actions by default The GitHub Blog GitHub Pages: Custom GitHub Actions Workflows (beta) GitHub Changelog This is a GitHub Action to deploy your static files to GitHub Pages . This deploy action can be combined simply and freely with [Static Site Generators]. (Hugo, MkDocs, Gatsby, mdBook, Next, Nuxt, and so on.) [Static Site Generators]: The next example step will deploy ./public directory to the remote gh pages branch. For newbies of GitHub Actions: Note that the GITHUB TOKEN is NOT a personal access token…
read the full actions-gh-pages overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or actions-gh-pages more popular?
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars and actions-gh-pages has 5,371. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and actions-gh-pages free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and actions-gh-pages under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and actions-gh-pages?
jekyll is written in Ruby and actions-gh-pages in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, jekyll or actions-gh-pages?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,745 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose actions-gh-pages if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.