Grav 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 Grav with
choose an app… Hugo Astro Gatsby Ghost Jekyll Payload CMS Hexo Halo Docsify WordPress Wagtail Eleventy Tina CMS Pelican Typecho October CMS django CMS Keystone Gridsome Orchard Core Metalsmith Publii Middleman Plasmic Pagekit Umbraco Joomla Statamic Mezzanine ApostropheCMS Drupal Lektor Pico Pimcore Craft CMS Microweber Anchor CMS Squidex Keystatic Piranha CMS PublicCMS Publify Kirby Winter CMS Bludit MODX Revolution Sulu TYPO3 Fork CMS Vvveb ProcessWire Backdrop CMS OJS Cowyo Automad ClassicPress Concrete CMS Superdesk Cockpit Next WonderCMS Silverstripe CMS Typemill Wiki-Go Bolt Omeka WikiDocs Omeka S ImpressPages Datenstrom Yellow Expressa Contao GetSimple CMS Monstra CouchCMS Indexhibit REDAXO Subrion CMS Phile 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 Ghost Jekyll Hexo Halo Wagtail Eleventy VitePress 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 Grav Zola Category Content Management Systems Blogging Platforms License MIT MIT Language PHP Rust Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 256 MB 128 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source binary, source GitHub stars ★ 15,620 ★ 17,308 First released 2014 2017 Replaces WordPress, Squarespace WordPress, Medium
Why pick each one
Choose Grav if… Trivial to back up and migrate Quick to set up Grav details Choose Zola if… No toolchain to install Very fast Zola details
Frequently asked questions Is Grav or Zola better? Neither is universally better. Zola has the larger community, while Grav is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grav and Zola free and open-source? Yes. Grav is licensed under MIT and Zola under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grav and Zola with Docker? Grav: yes. Zola: check the project docs for container support.