head to head · open source
jekyll vs nanoc
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nanoc has 2,158 stars, 250 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 19 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 2,295% (51,677 vs 2,158 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; nanoc is written in Ruby under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, nanoc 12%. jekyll was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | nanoc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 250 |
| 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 nanoc if
- You want the nanoc feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and nanoc 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 nanoc
Nanoc Nanoc is a flexible static site generator written in Ruby. See the Nanoc web site for more information. Contributions are greatly appreciated! Consult the guidelines for information on how you can contribute. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to Nanoc in one way or another: Abubakar Ango, Ale Muñoz, Alexander Groß, Alexander Mankuta, Andy Drop, Antar, Antonio Terceiro, Arnau Siches, Ben Armston, Bil Bas, Brian Candler, Bruno Dufour, Cédric Boutillier, Chris Burkhardt, Chris Chapman, Chris Eppstein, Christian Plessl, Colin Barrett, Colin Seymour, Croath Liu, Damien Mathieu, Damien Pollet, Dan Calla…
read the full nanoc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or nanoc more popular?
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars and nanoc has 2,158. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and nanoc free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and nanoc under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and nanoc?
jekyll is written in Ruby and nanoc 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 nanoc?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,677 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nanoc if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.