Jekyll vs Zola
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted blogging platforms options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Jekyll with
choose an app… Hugo Astro Gatsby Ghost Hexo Halo Wagtail Eleventy VitePress Grav Pelican Quartz Typecho October CMS Gridsome Orchard Core Metalsmith Publii Middleman Pagekit Harp Statamic Mezzanine Lektor Wintersmith DocPad VuePress Nikola Scully Lume Saber Ech0 Bashblog Hexo Admin Cobalt Bridgetown HTMLy Microblog.pub JBake Known Franklin BlogEngine.NET Textpattern Marmite Haven Orchid Chyrp Lite Soupault Haunt Mataroa Blogofile fx Acrylamid Shuttlecraft PluXml Nibbleblog Serendipity FlatPress blogc PageCord TuxSEO Saaze Dotclear Publ Poole Publican Pencil PureBlog SPIP
Compare Zola with
choose an app… Hugo Astro Gatsby Ghost 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 Jekyll Zola Category Blogging Platforms Blogging Platforms License MIT MIT Language Ruby Rust Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 256 MB 128 MB Deployment binary, source binary, source GitHub stars ★ 51,622 ★ 17,308 First released 2008 2017 Replaces WordPress, Blogger WordPress, Medium
Why pick each one
Choose Jekyll if… Mature and well documented Great for personal blogs Jekyll details Choose Zola if… No toolchain to install Very fast Zola details
Frequently asked questions Is Jekyll or Zola better? Neither is universally better. Jekyll has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Jekyll and Zola free and open-source? Yes. Jekyll is licensed under MIT and Zola under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Jekyll and Zola with Docker? Jekyll: check the project docs for container support. Zola: check the project docs for container support.