head to head · open source
jekyll vs hexo
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hexo has 41,770 stars, 42 forks, 75 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 24% (51,677 vs 41,770 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; hexo is written in TypeScript under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, hexo 0%. jekyll 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 | hexo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 42K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 42 |
| 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 hexo if
- You want the hexo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and hexo fits your workflow better
About jekyll
Jekyll is a blog aware static site generator written in Ruby and released under the MIT license. It takes content written in Markdown together with Liquid templates and renders a complete static website that can be served by Apache, Nginx, or any other web server. The project describes itself as a file based CMS without the complexity of a database backed one, and it is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which hosts sites directly from GitHub repositories. It lives in the Ruby ecosystem, is distributed as a gem, and has been developed for roughly eighteen years.
read the full jekyll overview →
About hexo
Hexo is a static site generator for blogs, built on Node.js and distributed as the hexo package through npm. The project is written in TypeScript, licensed under MIT, and lives in the Node.js and JavaScript ecosystem alongside the broader set of static site generators tracked under the static site generator topic. It has been published for roughly 14 years, carries about 41,766 stars, and points users to a dedicated website and documentation set at hexo.io.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or hexo more popular?
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars and hexo has 41,770. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and hexo free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and hexo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and hexo?
jekyll is written in Ruby and hexo 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 hexo?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,677 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hexo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.