head to head · open source
hexo vs nextra
hexo has 41,783 GitHub stars, 55 forks, 75 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. nextra has 13,946 stars, 1,410 forks, 346 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. hexo leads on adoption by 200% (41,783 vs 13,946 stars). hexo is written in TypeScript under MIT; nextra is written in TypeScript under MIT. hexo has attracted 0% as many forks as stars, nextra 10%. hexo 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
| hexo | nextra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-07-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 55 | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick hexo if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick nextra if
- You want the nextra feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and nextra fits your workflow better
About hexo
Hexo A fast, simple & powerful blog framework, powered by Node.js. Website Documentation Installation Guide Contribution Guide Code of Conduct API Twitter Features Blazing fast generating Support for GitHub Flavored Markdown and most Octopress plugins One command deploy to GitHub Pages, Heroku, etc. Powerful API for limitless extensibility Hundreds of themes & plugins Quick Start Install Hexo Install with brew on macOS and Linux: Setup your blog Start the server Create a new post Generate static files More Information Read the documentation Visit the Awesome Hexo list Find solutions in troubleshooting Join…
About nextra
Nextra Simple, powerful and flexible site generation framework with everything you love from Next.js. Documentation Development Installation The Nextra repository uses PNPM Workspaces and Turborepo. 1. Run corepack enable to enable Corepack. If the command above fails, run npm install g corepack@latest to install the latest version of Corepack. 2. Run pnpm install to install the project's dependencies. Build nextra Watch mode: pnpm filter nextra dev Build nextra theme docs Development You can also debug them together with a website locally. For instance, to start examples/docs locally, run Any change to…
read the full nextra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hexo or nextra more popular?
hexo has 41,783 GitHub stars and nextra has 13,946. hexo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hexo and nextra free?
Both are open source. hexo is licensed under MIT and nextra under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hexo and nextra?
hexo is written in TypeScript and nextra in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, hexo or nextra?
Choose hexo if you want the larger community (41,783 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nextra if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.