Haunt vs Publican
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted blogging platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Haunt | Publican |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Category | Blogging Platforms | Blogging Platforms |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Scheme | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 400 | ★ 20 |
| First released | 2015 | 2024 |
| Replaces | Jekyll | Jekyll, Hugo |
What are Haunt and Publican?
Haunt
Haunt is a hackable static site generator for blogs and websites, written in and configured with Guile Scheme. It treats site building as a functional pipeline, giving programmers fine-grained control over output.
- Functional build pipeline
- Scheme configuration
- Atom feed support
- Asset processing
Publican
Publican is a fast, dependency-light static site generator for blogs and content sites built with modern JavaScript. It renders Markdown content with flexible templating and incremental builds for quick publishing.
- Markdown content
- Flexible templating
- Incremental builds
- Minimal dependencies
Haunt vs Publican: key differences
Haunt is written in Scheme, while Publican is built with JavaScript. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for Haunt versus MIT for Publican. Haunt is the more established project (first released 2015), while Publican arrived in 2024. Haunt has the considerably larger community, at 400 GitHub stars versus 20.
Why pick each one
Choose Haunt if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- Written in Scheme
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Watch out for
- Niche language
- Steep for non-Lispers
Choose Publican if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Written in JavaScript
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Watch out for
- Young project
- Small theme selection
Frequently asked questions
Is Haunt or Publican better?
Neither is universally better. Haunt has the larger community, while Publican is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Haunt and Publican free and open-source?
Yes. Haunt is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Publican under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Haunt and Publican with Docker?
Haunt: check the project docs for container support. Publican: check the project docs for container support.