Ghost vs Zola
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Ghost with
choose an app… Hugo Astro Gatsby Jekyll Payload CMS Hexo Halo Docsify WordPress Wagtail Eleventy Grav Tina CMS Pelican Quartz Typecho October CMS django CMS Keystone Gridsome Orchard Core Metalsmith Publii Middleman Plasmic Pagekit Umbraco WriteFreely Joomla Statamic Mezzanine ApostropheCMS Drupal Pico Pimcore Craft CMS Microweber Anchor CMS Nikola Squidex Keystatic Plume Piranha CMS PublicCMS Publify Kirby Winter CMS Bludit MODX Revolution Sulu TYPO3 Fork CMS Vvveb ProcessWire Backdrop CMS OJS Cowyo Automad Marmite ClassicPress Concrete CMS Superdesk Cockpit Next WonderCMS Silverstripe CMS Typemill Wiki-Go Bolt ActivityPub for WordPress Omeka WikiDocs Omeka S ImpressPages Datenstrom Yellow Expressa Contao GetSimple CMS Monstra CouchCMS Indexhibit Mataroa REDAXO Subrion CMS GoBlog Phile PageCord Razuna Pytition Formwork Localess Noosfero WBCE CMS PHPBoost Sphido 299Ko CMS Made Simple Pepettes Scovie Lionwiki FastAPI Gemserv DotClear 2 Faircamp my_capsule Neos Petites Annonces PureBlog SPIP ZwiiCMS
Compare Zola with
choose an app… Hugo Astro Gatsby Jekyll Hexo Halo Wagtail Eleventy VitePress Grav Pelican Quartz Typecho October CMS Gridsome Orchard Core Metalsmith Publii Middleman Pagekit WriteFreely Harp Statamic Mezzanine Lektor Wintersmith DocPad VuePress Nikola Scully Lume Plume Saber Ech0 Bashblog Hexo Admin Cobalt Bridgetown HTMLy Microblog.pub JBake Known Franklin BlogEngine.NET Textpattern Marmite Haven ActivityPub for WordPress Orchid Chyrp Lite Soupault Haunt Mataroa Blogofile fx Acrylamid GoBlog Shuttlecraft PluXml Nibbleblog Serendipity FlatPress blogc PageCord TuxSEO Saaze Dotclear Publ Poole Publican Pencil
Feature Ghost Zola Category Content Management Systems Blogging Platforms License MIT MIT Language JavaScript Rust Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 1,024 MB 128 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source binary, source GitHub stars ★ 54,707 ★ 17,308 First released 2013 2017 Replaces WordPress, Substack, Medium WordPress, Medium
Why pick each one
Choose Ghost if… Excellent for newsletters and memberships Clean, fast publishing experience Ghost details Choose Zola if… No toolchain to install Very fast Zola details
Frequently asked questions Is Ghost or Zola better? Neither is universally better. Ghost has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Ghost and Zola free and open-source? Yes. Ghost is licensed under MIT and Zola under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Ghost and Zola with Docker? Ghost: yes. Zola: check the project docs for container support.