head to head · open source
kit vs publify
kit has 9,724 GitHub stars, 2,954 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. publify has 1,853 stars, 3,627 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. kit leads on adoption by 425% (9,724 vs 1,853 stars). kit is written in HTML under MIT; publify is written in Less under MIT. kit has attracted 30% as many forks as stars, publify 196%. publify 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
| kit | publify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.7K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | HTML | Less |
| Last push | 2026-08-04 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 3.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kit if
- You weight community size — 9.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick publify if
- You want the publify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Less
- You evaluated both and publify fits your workflow better
About kit
HugoBlox (listed in this registry as kit) is a free, MIT licensed static site framework that turns a plain English description into AI generated pages while keeping every page as Markdown you own, built for academics, researchers, developers, and small teams who need professional landing pages, portfolios, blogs, publications, and documentation without a database or a paid site builder.
About publify
Publify is a self hosted web publishing platform built on Ruby on Rails. It is the project formerly known as Typo, and it provides a blogging engine plus a small message system connected to Twitter.
read the full publify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kit or publify more popular?
kit has 9,724 GitHub stars and publify has 1,853. kit has the larger community by that measure.
Are kit and publify free?
Both are open source. kit is licensed under MIT and publify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kit and publify?
kit is written in HTML and publify in Less. 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 publify?
Choose kit if you want the larger community (9,724 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose publify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.