Bridgetown vs Pelican
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted blogging platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Bridgetown | Pelican |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 84 · Excellent | 80 · Excellent |
| Category | Blogging Platforms | Blogging Platforms |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Ruby | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,366 | ★ 13,339 |
| First released | 2020 | 2010 |
| Replaces | Jekyll, WordPress | WordPress, Blogger |
What are Bridgetown and Pelican?
Bridgetown
Bridgetown is a Ruby-based static site generator and full-stack web framework that grew out of the Jekyll ecosystem. It supports component-based design, plugins, and optional dynamic rendering for blogs and websites.
- Component-based design
- Plugin ecosystem
- Front-end bundling
- Static and hybrid rendering
Pelican
Pelican is an open-source static site generator written in Python that builds blogs from Markdown or reStructuredText. It supports themes, plugins, and import from other blogging platforms.
- Markdown and reStructuredText
- Theme and plugin support
- Import from WordPress and others
- Atom and RSS feeds
Bridgetown vs Pelican: key differences
Bridgetown is written in Ruby, while Pelican is built with Python. Licensing differs — MIT for Bridgetown versus AGPL-3.0 for Pelican. Pelican is the more established project (first released 2010), while Bridgetown arrived in 2020. Pelican has the considerably larger community, at 13,339 GitHub stars versus 1,366.
Why pick each one
Choose Bridgetown if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Active community (1.4k GitHub stars)
- Written in Ruby
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Choose Pelican if…
- Great for Python users
- Mature and stable
Watch out for
- No admin UI
- Python environment needed
Frequently asked questions
Is Bridgetown or Pelican better?
Neither is universally better. Pelican has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Bridgetown and Pelican free and open-source?
Yes. Bridgetown is licensed under MIT and Pelican under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Bridgetown and Pelican with Docker?
Bridgetown: check the project docs for container support. Pelican: check the project docs for container support.