Hugo
A static site generator written in Go that builds thousands of pages in seconds from Markdown files.
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4 more ways to get Hugo
Package managers
- winget
winget install --id Hugo.Hugo - Chocolatey
choco install hugo - Homebrew
brew install hugo - Snap Store
snap install hugo
About Hugo
Hugo takes a folder of Markdown files and a theme and produces plain HTML. It is famously fast, which matters once a site is large: builds that take minutes in other generators finish in seconds, and the live-reload development server reflects a saved file almost instantly.
It is a single binary with no runtime dependencies, so there is no Node or Ruby environment to maintain, and it handles taxonomies, multilingual sites, image processing, asset pipelines and Sass compilation itself. Hugo Modules use Go's module system to pull in themes and components. The templating language is the main obstacle: it is Go templates, which are powerful but awkward.
Note that the extended build is the one most themes expect, because it includes Sass support.
Strengths
- Builds large sites in seconds, with near-instant live reload while writing
- A single binary with no Node or Ruby runtime to keep working
- Image processing, asset pipelines and Sass compilation are built in
- Handles taxonomies and multilingual sites without plugins
Limitations
- Go templates are the steepest part of the learning curve
- You need the extended build for Sass, and picking the wrong one causes confusing errors
- Themes vary wildly in quality and are often tied to a specific Hugo version
- Dynamic features need a separate service, since the output is static files
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source under Apache 2.0.
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Developer
- Hugo Authors
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Building a blog or documentation site that stays fast as it grows to thousands of pages
- Categories
- Developer tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (Dev Tools); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 2 sources on file.
Alternatives to Hugo
Compare allSoftware that can replace Hugo for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
MkDocs
Static site generator that builds documentation sites from Markdown.
MkDocs builds documentation sites from Markdown and one YAML file, with search and versioning depending on theme and plugins, and without Hugo's built-in image processing.
Docusaurus
React-based static site generator built for documentation sites.
Docusaurus is a React-based generator with built-in documentation versioning, translation and MDX components, but it needs a Node toolchain instead of Hugo's single Go binary.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
