head to head · open source
jekyll vs kit
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. kit has 9,782 stars, 2,950 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 429% (51,745 vs 9,782 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; kit is written in HTML under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, kit 30%. jekyll was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | kit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 9.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-08-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| 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 kit if
- You want the kit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and kit 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 kit
中文 Describe your site. AI builds it. You own it as Markdown. HugoBlox is the open source framework for building professional sites from structured Markdown — landing pages, portfolios, blogs, publications, docs, and more. Pick a template, let Hugo Chat AI generate your pages, and deploy anywhere. Every file is plain Markdown you can read, edit, and own forever. Generate Pages with AI Browse Templates Ownable CMS for VS Code Trusted since 2016 · 150,000+ sites (Meta, Stanford, NVIDIA) · Rated 4.9/5 by users (official survey) · Used by teams at NVIDIA Research , MIT , and King's College London · Featured by GitHub…
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or kit more popular?
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars and kit has 9,782. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and kit free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and kit under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and kit?
jekyll is written in Ruby and kit in HTML. 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 kit?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,745 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.