head to head · open source
jekyll vs publify
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. publify has 1,853 stars, 3,627 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jekyll leads on adoption by 2,689% (51,677 vs 1,853 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; publify is written in Less under MIT. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, publify 196%. 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, ruby), 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 | publify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Less |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 3.6K |
| 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 publify if
- You want the publify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Less
- You evaluated both and publify 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 publify
Publify is a self hosted web publishing platform built on Ruby on Rails. It is the project formerly known as Typo, and it provides a blogging engine plus a small message system connected to Twitter.
read the full publify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or publify more popular?
jekyll has 51,677 GitHub stars and publify has 1,853. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and publify free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and publify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and publify?
jekyll is written in Ruby and publify in Less. 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 publify?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,677 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose publify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.