head to head · open source
jekyll vs lektor
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars, 10,304 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. lektor has 3,949 stars, 320 forks, 251 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 1,210% (51,745 vs 3,949 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; lektor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, lektor 8%. lektor 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 | lektor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Ruby | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 320 |
| 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 lektor if
- You want the lektor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and lektor 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 lektor
Lektor [![CI/CD Badge]][CI/CD] [CI/CD Badge]: [CI/CD]: Lektor is a static website generator. It builds out an entire project from static files into many individual HTML pages and has a built in admin UI and minimal desktop app. To see how it works look at the top level example/ folder, which contains a showcase of the wide variety of Lektor's features. For a more complete example look at the lektor/lektor website repository, which contains the source code for the official Lektor website. How do I use this? For installation instructions head to the official documentation: Installation Quickstart Want to develop…
read the full lektor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or lektor more popular?
jekyll has 51,745 GitHub stars and lektor has 3,949. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and lektor free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and lektor under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and lektor?
jekyll is written in Ruby and lektor in Python. 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 lektor?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,745 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lektor if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.