Haunt vs Wintersmith
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted blogging platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Haunt | Wintersmith |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Category | Blogging Platforms | Blogging Platforms |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Scheme | CoffeeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | source, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 400 | ★ 3,478 |
| First released | 2015 | 2012 |
| Replaces | Jekyll | WordPress, Jekyll |
What are Haunt and Wintersmith?
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
Wintersmith
Wintersmith is a simple yet flexible static site generator built on Node.js that turns Markdown content into a static website or blog. Its plugin system allows custom content types and generators.
- Plugin-driven generators
- Markdown content
- Jade and Pug templates
- Static output
Haunt vs Wintersmith: key differences
Haunt is written in Scheme, while Wintersmith is built with CoffeeScript. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for Haunt versus MIT for Wintersmith. Wintersmith is the more established project (first released 2012), while Haunt arrived in 2015. Wintersmith has the considerably larger community, at 3,478 GitHub stars versus 400.
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 Wintersmith if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Active community (3.5k GitHub stars)
- Written in CoffeeScript
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Haunt or Wintersmith better?
Neither is universally better. Wintersmith has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Haunt and Wintersmith free and open-source?
Yes. Haunt is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Wintersmith under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Haunt and Wintersmith with Docker?
Haunt: check the project docs for container support. Wintersmith: check the project docs for container support.