head to head · open source
jekyll vs Pagecord
jekyll has 51,676 GitHub stars, 10,300 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Pagecord has 190 stars, 15 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jekyll leads on adoption by 27,098% (51,676 vs 190 stars). jekyll is written in Ruby under MIT; Pagecord is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence. jekyll has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, Pagecord 8%. Pagecord was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Pagecord | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 190 |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 15 |
| 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 Pagecord if
- You want the Pagecord feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Pagecord 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 Pagecord
Pagecord is a personal website and blogging platform built on Ruby on Rails that is aimed at people who want to run their own blog, either through the hosted service at pagecord.com or from their own machine, and who would rather write than fight a publishing pipeline.
read the full Pagecord overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jekyll or Pagecord more popular?
jekyll has 51,676 GitHub stars and Pagecord has 190. jekyll has the larger community by that measure.
Are jekyll and Pagecord free?
Both are open source. jekyll is licensed under MIT, and Pagecord has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between jekyll and Pagecord?
jekyll is written in Ruby and Pagecord in Ruby. 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 Pagecord?
Choose jekyll if you want the larger community (51,676 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Pagecord if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.