Pick the SSG by what your team will actually maintain for two years
Astro, Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll, Gatsby. Five generators, three honest answers in 2026 — Astro for modern content, Hugo for build speed at scale, Eleventy for simplicity. Jekyll and Gatsby are mostly legacy now.
READ THE FULL COMPARISONThe SSGs, by the brief that picks each one
Astro
The 2026 default for modern content sites
Multi-framework islands, zero-JS by default, Content Layer API, Server Islands. 91K-page production proof on HostList.io.
Read the take →Hugo
Fastest builds in the category, by 5-10x
Go-based, single binary, no Node dependency. Right call past 20K pages where build time is a real CI cost.
Read the take →Eleventy (11ty)
JavaScript without framework overhead
Configuration-light, no React or Vue commitment, clean HTML output. Right for blogs and docs where simplicity is the brief.
Read the take →Jekyll
GitHub Pages native + legacy maintenance
Ruby-based, mature, free hosting on GitHub Pages. Mostly used in 2026 for that specific case or legacy projects.
Read the take →Gatsby
In soft decline since 2023 acquisition
React + GraphQL data layer, production-stable. New projects rarely pick it; existing sites stay on it.
Read the take →The decision in one sentence
Pick Astro for any modern content site under 20K pages. Pick Hugo if build speed at scale is the bottleneck. Pick Eleventy for simple blog or documentation sites where 'just give me HTML' is the brief. Pick Jekyll only for free GitHub Pages hosting. Stay on Gatsby only if you already have a Gatsby site that is working.
The supporting comparisons
- Static site generators 2026: Astro, Eleventy, Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby Production benchmarks from a 91K-page Astro site plus Hugo, Eleventy, Gatsby comparisons.
- Next.js vs Remix vs Astro in 2026 When the choice expands beyond pure SSGs into application frameworks.
- Headless WordPress + Astro: a working setup Practical setup if your SSG choice is Astro paired with a WordPress back end.
- How I built a 25,000-page directory in Next.js Production case study at scale, with Astro vs Next.js context for content-heavy sites.
The full directory of 40+ SSGs
This hub is the editorial top-5. The full directory at /static-site-generators/ covers 40+ generators with filterable language, category, and license — including the niche Rust, Deno, Ruby, Python, and Haskell options that do not make the top-5 cut but do win specific briefs.