head to head · open source
kit vs htmly
kit has 9,724 GitHub stars, 2,954 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. htmly has 1,363 stars, 306 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. kit leads on adoption by 613% (9,724 vs 1,363 stars). kit is written in HTML under MIT; htmly is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. kit has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, htmly 22%. kit was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (blog), 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
| kit | htmly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.7K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | HTML | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-08-04 | 2026-01-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 306 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kit if
- You weight community size — 9.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick htmly if
- You want the htmly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and htmly fits your workflow better
About kit
HugoBlox (listed in this registry as kit) is a free, MIT licensed static site framework that turns a plain English description into AI generated pages while keeping every page as Markdown you own, built for academics, researchers, developers, and small teams who need professional landing pages, portfolios, blogs, publications, and documentation without a database or a paid site builder.
About htmly
HTMLy is an open source blogging platform and flat file CMS written in PHP. It serves people who want a blog or simple website without running a database server. The project stores content in files and uses an algorithm to list material by date, type, category, tag, or author. It lives in the PHP web publishing ecosystem.
read the full htmly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kit or htmly more popular?
kit has 9,724 GitHub stars and htmly has 1,363. kit has the larger community by that measure.
Are kit and htmly free?
Both are open source. kit is licensed under MIT and htmly under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kit and htmly?
kit is written in HTML and htmly 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, kit or htmly?
Choose kit if you want the larger community (9,724 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose htmly if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.