Which is the best static site generator? A com­par­is­on of 10 top options

A static site generator (SSG) is an ideal de­vel­op­ment solution for many website types. Offering low com­plex­ity along with high per­form­ance and security, SSGs are widely favoured. In this article, we highlight the best static site gen­er­at­ors and provide helpful tips for choosing and using them.

What makes a good static site generator?

Compared to popular content man­age­ment systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla!, and others, static site gen­er­at­ors offer sig­ni­fic­antly lower com­plex­ity and enhanced security. Some SSGs even support running a content man­age­ment system as a headless CMS.

The most com­pel­ling argument that dis­tin­guishes the best static site gen­er­at­ors is the per­form­ance of the generated websites. Static websites can be hosted with minimal effort because no special server en­vir­on­ment is needed to execute code. With SSGs, HTML and CSS elements are rendered directly when the code changes. Ad­di­tion­ally, static sites are much easier to cache; popular options include so-called edge caches, which are provided globally via content delivery networks (CDN).

A com­par­is­on of the best static site gen­er­at­ors

Due to the simple operating principle and wide­spread pop­ular­ity, a thriving ecosystem of static site gen­er­at­ors (SSG) has developed. The website jamstack.org lists over 360 SSGs and provides an overview of the tech­no­lo­gies in use. In the following sections, you will find some of the best static site gen­er­at­ors in direct com­par­is­on and brief portraits.

In­form­a­tion correct as of May 2025

Next.js

Next is currently the most popular static site generator by numbers. Next is written in JavaS­cript. Locally, Node.js is used for compiling. Server-side rendering is also possible with Node.js. The JavaS­cript framework ‘React’ is used as the template language, and the TypeScript dialect is supported. This allows modular com­pon­ents to be created, con­tain­ing the website’s content.

Hugo

As reflected in its name, the static site generator (SSG) Hugo is written in the pro­gram­ming language Go. Unlike most of the best static site gen­er­at­ors, Hugo is delivered as a single binary file. This results in high per­form­ance, allowing for the creation of static websites with thousands of pages. Con­cep­tu­ally, Hugo builds on many of the prin­ciples that made the SSG pioneer Jekyll famous.

Doc­u­s­aur­us

Doc­u­s­aur­us is among the best static site gen­er­at­ors for creating doc­u­ment­a­tion and project websites. The open-source project is primarily supported by Meta. Content is written in Markdown and then enhanced with React com­pon­ents. Doc­u­s­aur­us offers in­teg­rated features like ver­sion­ing, loc­al­isa­tion, and a plugin ar­chi­tec­ture that is es­pe­cially tailored to the needs of de­velopers.

Nuxt

As the name suggests, Nuxt is a static site generator inspired by Next. However, instead of React, Vue is used as the component framework. Like Next, Nuxt also offers multiple de­ploy­ment modes: both static site gen­er­a­tion and server-side rendering are supported.

Gatsby

Gatsby is a React-based de­vel­op­ment approach that enables rapid de­vel­op­ment using a GraphQL data pipeline. Gatsby is often used to enhance the per­form­ance of WordPress sites. The content is read via a GraphQL interface and packaged into a static website using React. By de­coup­ling the front end and back end, WordPress becomes a ‘headless CMS’. Gatsby also allows for the creation of ‘Pro­gress­ive Web Apps’ (PWA).

Astro

Astro is one of the newer entrants among the best static site gen­er­at­ors. The software is spe­cific­ally designed to make websites as light and fast as possible. The ‘Islands Ar­chi­tec­ture’ approach allows in­ter­act­ive com­pon­ents to be loaded only when truly needed. Astro supports various template languages such as React, Vue, Svelte, or SolidJS and offers the ability to generate content com­pletely stat­ic­ally or server-side. With a focus on HTML first de­vel­op­ment, Astro is par­tic­u­larly well-suited for content-driven websites and fast landing pages.

Jekyll

Jekyll is the corner­stone of the best static site gen­er­at­ors. This software pop­ular­ised the SSG concept, driving the wide­spread adoption of the tech­no­logy. The concept behind a static site generator is simple: Content from markdown files is struc­tured into templates and served as a static site. Jekyll is par­tic­u­larly well-suited for building blogs and doc­u­ment­a­tion. Written in Ruby, it serves as the core framework for GitHub Pages, which is in­teg­rated into the GitHub code hosting service.

Hexo

Hexo ad­vert­ises itself as a fast, simple, and powerful blog framework. The focus is on gen­er­at­ing blogs and other sites whose content can be main­tained as a col­lec­tion of markdown files. This places Hexo in the class of Jekyll-like static site gen­er­at­ors. By using plugins, a variety of ad­di­tion­al template languages can be utilised. To quickly set up a design, you can choose one of the pre-made themes.

VuePress

With VuePress, another static site generator is available that uses Vue as a template language. The software’s mantra is ‘Con­ven­tion over Con­fig­ur­a­tion’. This allows the SSG to be used with little effort; in the simplest case, placing Markdown files in a special folder and trig­ger­ing the build process is suf­fi­cient. VuePress is par­tic­u­larly well-suited for quickly creating doc­u­ment­a­tion.

Eleventy

The Eleventy static site generator is often promoted as a Jekyll al­tern­at­ive or ‘Jekyll im­ple­men­ted in JavaS­cript’. Like the famous pre­de­cessor, Eleventy creates static sites without the need to in­cor­por­ate a client-side JavaS­cript framework like React or Vue. This keeps the full control over the rendered pages with the developer. The most striking feature of Eleventy is its flex­ib­il­ity. Various languages and formats can be used, and the default behaviour of the SSG can be ex­tens­ively adjusted through con­fig­ur­a­tion.

How to find the right static site generator?

To choose the best static site generator for a project, it is crucial to answer the following two questions regarding the project type:

• Is it a blog or a col­lec­tion of landing pages? In this case, a simple SSG that generates pages from a few markdown files would be ideal.
• Is a web app or an online store required? In that case, you may want to consider a component-based SSG using React or Vue. Al­tern­at­ively, you could choose a generator that also supports server-side rendering.

The ex­per­i­ence of the de­velopers involved should also be con­sidered in the choice of the best static site generator (SSG):

• If only one template language is available, it is ad­vant­age­ous if the de­velopers are familiar with the language.
• If you can choose from a variety of template languages, you are sig­ni­fic­antly more flexible.
• It is also relevant whether the template language is used only during the build process (Twig, Liquid) or is closely in­teg­rated with the frontend (React, Vue).

The next important point to clarify is where the content for the site comes from:

• If a site is built from scratch, the content can po­ten­tially be entirely stored in markdown.
• Is it an existing site that already contains large amounts of content? Then you should use a static site generator that can access content from different sources through defined in­ter­faces like GraphQL.

Hosting is also an important factor when selecting the best static site generator. Depending on the server en­vir­on­ment, certain languages or runtime en­vir­on­ments may not be available. However, this issue is less relevant when hosting within a container. Finally, when choosing the best static site generator, it’s essential to consider the ecosystem. It’s important to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between niche solutions and industry standards. A larger community typically offers a broader range of doc­u­ment­a­tion, tutorials, and support for troubleshoot­ing errors.

SSGs as part of the Jamstack

Like all tools of the industry, the best static site gen­er­at­ors are part of the so-called Jamstack. Its name is derived from the initials of JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. Here’s an overview of the specific benefits of the in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents of the Jamstack:

Websites based on the Jamstack are static websites. The in­di­vidu­al pages are linked to each other. The content often exists in a simple markup format (like markdown). Any dynamic content, such as comment or search functions, is im­ple­men­ted in JavaS­cript. Data exchange runs via APIs that operate on remote systems. With Jamstack, websites are generated during their build time using SSGs, op­tim­ising their per­form­ance. In contrast, ‘tra­di­tion­al’ websites are generated during runtime, resulting in longer load times.

How to deploy a static site generator via GitHub?

In a static site generator, unlike most content man­age­ment systems, no database is used. Instead, all com­pon­ents are available as files. This includes the content and assets for the static website, as well as the code and con­fig­ur­a­tion of the SSG. These can all be managed in a Git re­pos­it­ory, enabling version control and col­lab­or­a­tion.

To build a static website with a static site generator (SSG), HTML documents and asset files (images, scripts, stylesheets) are created during the build process. In the sub­sequent deploy step, the files are uploaded to a web server. With Deploy Now by IONOS, the entire process can be automated. Any change to the re­pos­it­ory auto­mat­ic­ally triggers the build process and updates the files on the server. Deploy Now utilises GitHub Actions, allowing the build logs to be displayed directly in the GitHub dashboard.