head to head · open source
jekyll vs bridgetown
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. bridgetown has 1,376 stars, 133 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 3,661% (51,745 vs 1,376 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; bridgetown is written in Ruby under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, bridgetown 10%. bridgetown was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (blog-engine, ruby, 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 | bridgetown | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 133 |
| 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 bridgetown if
- You want the bridgetown feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and bridgetown 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 bridgetown
Bridgetown Bridgetown is a next generation, progressive site generator & fullstack framework, powered by Ruby. Bridgetown takes your local content and external data loaded from APIs; renders templates in Markdown, ERB, and many other formats; automatically compiles frontend assets via esbuild; and exports a complete website ready to be served by fast CDNs like Render or traditional web servers. Bridgetown also integrates closely with Roda for fullstack, dynamic web application functionality—but only when and where you need it. Sponsor Bridgetown Development 🙏 Your direct financial assistance is greatly…
read the full bridgetown overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or bridgetown more popular?
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars and bridgetown has 1,376. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and bridgetown free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and bridgetown under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and bridgetown?
jekyll is written in Ruby and bridgetown in Ruby. 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 bridgetown?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,745 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose bridgetown if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.