head to head · open source
nuxt vs gatsby
nuxt has 60,872 GitHub stars, 5,800 forks, 480 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gatsby has 55,939 stars, 10,115 forks, 450 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nuxt leads on adoption by 9% (60,872 vs 55,939 stars). nuxt is written in TypeScript under MIT; gatsby is written in JavaScript under MIT. nuxt has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, gatsby 18%. nuxt 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
| nuxt | gatsby | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 56K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 10K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nuxt if
- You weight community size — 61K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gatsby if
- You want the gatsby feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and gatsby fits your workflow better
About nuxt
Nuxt is a free and open source full stack framework for building web applications and websites with Vue.js. It lives in the Vue ecosystem and is written in TypeScript under the MIT license, with the repository hosted on GitHub and the project documented at nuxt.com. The framework describes itself as offering an intuitive and extendable way to create type safe, performant and production grade full stack applications, and it has been developed over roughly ten years, with the most recent push to the repository recorded in September 2026.
About gatsby
Gatsby is a free and open source, React based framework for building websites and applications, released under the MIT license and written primarily in JavaScript. It combines the control and scalability of dynamically rendered sites with the speed of static site generation, and it sits in the JavaScript and React ecosystem as a static site generator, a compiler, and a GraphQL driven build tool. The project has been developed for roughly eleven years, carries 55,939 stars and 10,117 forks on GitHub, and currently has 450 open issues.
read the full gatsby overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nuxt or gatsby more popular?
nuxt has 60,872 GitHub stars and gatsby has 55,939. nuxt has the larger community by that measure.
Are nuxt and gatsby free?
Both are open source. nuxt is licensed under MIT and gatsby under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nuxt and gatsby?
nuxt is written in TypeScript and gatsby in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, nuxt or gatsby?
Choose nuxt if you want the larger community (60,872 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gatsby if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.