head to head · open source
jekyll vs wordpress-static-site-exporter
jekyll has 51,699 GitHub stars, 10,301 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. wordpress-static-site-exporter has 1,079 stars, 128 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jekyll leads on adoption by 4,691% (51,699 vs 1,079 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; wordpress-static-site-exporter is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, wordpress-static-site-exporter 12%. wordpress-static-site-exporter was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (jekyll, markdown, 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 | wordpress-static-site-exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 128 |
| 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 wordpress-static-site-exporter if
- You want the wordpress-static-site-exporter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and wordpress-static-site-exporter 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 wordpress-static-site-exporter
Static Site Exporter is a WordPress plugin for site owners and developers who want to move a WordPress blog or site to Markdown so it can be served by Jekyll, Hugo, or any other static site generator.
read the full wordpress-static-site-exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or wordpress-static-site-exporter more popular?
jekyll has 51,699 GitHub stars and wordpress-static-site-exporter has 1,079. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and wordpress-static-site-exporter free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and wordpress-static-site-exporter under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and wordpress-static-site-exporter?
jekyll is written in Ruby and wordpress-static-site-exporter 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 wordpress-static-site-exporter?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,699 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose wordpress-static-site-exporter if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.