head to head · open source
jekyll vs lektor
jekyll has 51,676 GitHub stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. lektor has 3,948 stars, 319 forks, 251 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jekyll leads on adoption by 1,209% (51,676 vs 3,948 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; lektor is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, lektor 8%. lektor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | lektor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Ruby | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 319 |
| 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 lektor if
- You want the lektor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and lektor 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 lektor
Lektor is a static website generator written in Python that builds an entire project from static files into many individual HTML pages and ships with a built in admin UI and a minimal desktop app, intended for people who want content management without running a database backed CMS.
read the full lektor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or lektor more popular?
jekyll has 51,676 GitHub stars and lektor has 3,948. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and lektor free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT and lektor under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jekyll and lektor?
jekyll is written in Ruby and lektor in Python. 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 lektor?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,676 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lektor if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.