head to head · open source
kit vs htmly
kit has 9,787 GitHub stars, 2,950 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. htmly has 1,368 stars, 306 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. kit leads on adoption by 615% (9,787 vs 1,368 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 | ★ 9.8K | ★ 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 — 9.8K 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
中文 Describe your site. AI builds it. You own it as Markdown. HugoBlox is the open source framework for building professional sites from structured Markdown — landing pages, portfolios, blogs, publications, docs, and more. Pick a template, let Hugo Chat AI generate your pages, and deploy anywhere. Every file is plain Markdown you can read, edit, and own forever. Generate Pages with AI Browse Templates Ownable CMS for VS Code Trusted since 2016 · 150,000+ sites (Meta, Stanford, NVIDIA) · Rated 4.9/5 by users (official survey) · Used by teams at NVIDIA Research , MIT , and King's College London · Featured by GitHub…
About htmly
HTMLy is an open source databaseless blogging platform prioritizes simplicity and speed written in PHP. It uses a unique algorithm to find or list any content based on date, type, category, tag, or author, and it's performance remain fast even if we have ten thousand of posts and hundreds of tags. Requirements HTMLy requires PHP 7.2 or greater, PHP Mbstring, PHP XML, PHP INTL, PHP GD, and PHP ZIP package for backup feature. Installations Install HTMLy using the source code: 1. Download the latest version from the Github repo 2. Upload and extract the zip file to your web server. You can upload it in the root…
read the full htmly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kit or htmly more popular?
kit has 9,787 GitHub stars and htmly has 1,368. 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 (9,787 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose htmly if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.