Do you use the best static site tech stack?

Pure HTML pages are the fastest website around. However, server-side scripting languages enable richer functionality. Static sites solve this problem by providing the best of both worlds. Static sites are:

Cheap
Easy to use
Fast

On the other hand, complex functionality can be a bit more limited and time consuming to implement.

Here are some popular static site generators:

Features

Name	NextJS (Recommended)	Gatsby 🪦	Astro	Hugo	Builder.io
Language	React	React	Most major JS frameworks via islands	Go	Customizable
Data Handling	Fully customisable	GraphQL	Fully customisable	Customizable	Fully customisable
Data Sources	Fully customisable	Filesystems, CMS, APIs, Databases, Local files	Fully customisable	Filesystem	CMS, APIs, Customizable
GitHub Pages Integration	Requires setup	Seamless deployment via config files	Deployment via GitHub Actions	Deployment with GitHub Actions	Customizable
TinaCMS integration	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

Note: 🪦 Gatsby is no longer being actively developed.

(Data captured in late 2024)

Name	Next.js (Recommended)	Gatsby	Hugo	Astro	Builder.io
GitHub Stars	127,000 👑	55,000	75,000	47,000	8,000
NPM Downloads (Weekly)	6,000,000 👑	260,000	N/A	247,000	N/A
Stack Overflow Questions	92,000 👑	15,000	6,000	2,000	100
BuiltWith Sites	1,400,000 👑	126,000	167,000	483,000	N/A
State of JS (2023)	57% used it 👑	17% used it	N/A	17% used it	N/A
Google Trends Rank	1st 👑	4th	3rd	2nd	5th (almost 0 data)