Our take
Activeregular commits and releases- Activity
- 85
- Community
- 71
- Issues
- 81
- Pull requests
- 72
+78 stars in the last 8 days
- Releases more often than 85% of the projects we track
- More contributors than 77% of the projects we track
Hugo is a mature, actively maintained static-site generator with broad contributor participation, frequent releases, and a capable Go-based toolchain.
Good fit if
- You need a static site generator for blogs, documentation, or multilingual websites.
- You want built-in asset processing and local previewing as part of the site build.
- Your team can use Go 1.27.0 or later and the Apache-2.0-licensed project.
Look elsewhere if
- Your site depends on dynamic server-side behavior or a database at request time, rather than generated static files.
- Your workflow requires a different runtime or does not suit Hugo's Go-based build requirements.
All health signals
| Last commit | 2026-10-11 (today) |
|---|---|
| Commits, last 90 days | 100+ |
| Releases, last 12 months | 41 (latest v0.167.0, 2026-09-28) |
| Contributors | 100+ (top contributor: 66% of commits) |
| Issues closed, last 90 days | 25+ (typically closed in 1 day) |
| Pull requests merged, last 90 days | 37 (typically merged in 0 days) |
| Project age | 13 years |
Checked on 2026-10-12 with the GitHub API.
Overview
Hugo generates static websites from content and templates, producing files that can be hosted without a server-side application. It addresses the need to build and update sites, from blogs to documentation, while keeping the development and deployment workflow relatively simple.
It is a good fit for teams comfortable with a static-site workflow and Go-based tooling, especially when multilingual content, reusable project resources, or built-in asset processing matter. Hugo is actively maintained, with regular commits and releases and broad contributor participation.
Key Features
- Renders static pages from content and templates, with an embedded web server for local previews.
- Supports multilingual sites and taxonomies for organizing content.
- Processes CSS, images, JavaScript, Sass, and Tailwind CSS as part of the build.
- Hugo Modules can share content, assets, data, translations, themes, templates, and configuration through Git repositories.
- Offers standard, deploy, extended, and combined editions with different capabilities.
- Can deploy directly to supported Google Cloud Storage, AWS S3, and Azure Storage destinations in deploy editions.
Use Cases
- Documentation teams can publish reference material and guides as static sites without operating an application server.
- Bloggers and publishers can generate blogs and news sites from content and templates.
- Organizations can build multilingual corporate, nonprofit, government, or education websites.
- Designers and photographers can make landing pages, portfolios, or project sites with image processing built into the build workflow.
What you need
Detected in the repository
- Go 1.27.0 or newer (from go.mod)
- A Dockerfile, so it can run in a container
- Automated checks on GitHub Actions
License in plain words
Apache-2.0permissive
- Commercial use: yes
- Modify and redistribute: yes
- You must keep: the license, the NOTICE file and a note of your changes
- Share your changes: no
- Includes an explicit patent grant from the contributors:
A summary, not legal advice: the LICENSE file is what applies.
Getting Started
Install a prebuilt binary or use a package manager, then follow the installation guide. To build and install the standard edition from source:
CGO_ENABLED=0 go install github.com/gohugoio/hugo@latest
See the README and documentation for edition choices and setup details.
Alternatives
- mkdocs: MkDocs focuses on Markdown-based documentation sites and uses YAML configuration, while Hugo is a general-purpose generator with broader content and multilingual features.
- makesite: makesite is a minimal Python generator whose code is intended for direct customization, while Hugo offers a broader templating and asset pipeline.
- pelican: Pelican is a Python publishing generator with Markdown and reStructuredText support, while Hugo is Go-based and includes broader multilingual and asset features.
| Project | Language | License | Stars | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hugo | Go | Apache-2.0 | 90.1k | Active |
| mkdocs | Python | BSD-2-Clause | 22.5k | Quiet |
| makesite | Python | MIT | 1.9k | Inactive |
| pelican | Python | AGPL-3.0 | 13.3k | Quiet |
Considerations
Hugo produces static output, so features that require dynamic server-side processing need a separate service or a different architecture. Building from source requires Go 1.27.0 or later; the extended edition additionally requires a C compiler. The README notes that embedded LibSass support is deprecated and planned for removal, and recommends Dart Sass instead. Hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0; check the licenses of bundled libraries as well when distributing binaries.
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