head to head · open source
jekyll vs htmly
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. htmly has 1,368 stars, 307 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 3,683% (51,745 vs 1,368 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; htmly is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, htmly 22%. jekyll was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (blog-engine, markdown), 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 | htmly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-01-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 307 |
| 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 htmly if
- You want the htmly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and htmly 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 htmly
HTMLy is an open source databaseless blogging platform prioritizes simplicity and speed written in PHP. It uses a unique algorithm to find or list any content based on date, type, category, tag, or author, and it's performance remain fast even if we have ten thousand of posts and hundreds of tags. Requirements HTMLy requires PHP 7.2 or greater, PHP Mbstring, PHP XML, PHP INTL, PHP GD, and PHP ZIP package for backup feature. Installations Install HTMLy using the source code: 1. Download the latest version from the Github repo 2. Upload and extract the zip file to your web server. You can upload it in the root…
read the full htmly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or htmly more popular?
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars and htmly has 1,368. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and htmly free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and htmly under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and htmly?
jekyll is written in Ruby and htmly 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, jekyll or htmly?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,745 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose htmly if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.