What is Hugo used for?

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that builds websites from Markdown and templates, with themes, modules and Sass support, for blogs and documentation. It is a good fit for developer blogs and personal sites, documentation sites kept in Git, and static marketing pages.

Yes. Hugo is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at gohugoio/hugo and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Hugo is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What are some alternatives to Hugo?

Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include Zola, Marmite and Bludit. SaaS products in the same category include BlogBowl, Blogsitefy and CloudCannon.

Is Hugo actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Hugo was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.167.0, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 90k stars on GitHub.

Hugo: open-source CMS

About Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. You write content in Markdown, combine it with templates and a theme, and Hugo renders a folder of plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript that can be hosted almost anywhere without a server-side runtime or database. It is widely used for blogs, documentation sites and marketing pages.

It ships as a single prebuilt binary for Linux, macOS, Windows and the BSDs, and can also be built from source with Go and a C compiler. Hugo Modules let a site pull in themes and shared content as versioned components, a theme gallery gives starting points, and built-in functions transpile Sass to CSS. A deploy command and hosting guides cover publishing to common platforms.

The project is Apache-2.0 licensed and built by a community of contributors. Unlike a hosted CMS, there is no admin interface by default: editing happens in files, often tracked in Git, which suits developers and technical writers who prefer a plain-text workflow.

Key features

Builds sites from Markdown content and templates
Hugo Modules for themes and shared components
Built-in Sass transpilation
Single prebuilt binary for major platforms
Large theme gallery
Deploy command for common hosting targets

Good fit for

→Developer blogs and personal sites
→Documentation sites kept in Git
→Static marketing pages

Built with: Go
Tags: static-site-generator; go; markdown; blog; documentation; jamstack; themes; cms

Hugo: questions and answers

What is Hugo used for?: Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that builds websites from Markdown and templates, with themes, modules and Sass support, for blogs and documentation. It is a good fit for developer blogs and personal sites, documentation sites kept in Git, and static marketing pages.
Is Hugo open source?: Yes. Hugo is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at gohugoio/hugo and is written mainly in Go.
Is Hugo free?: Yes. Hugo is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What are some alternatives to Hugo?: Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include Zola, Marmite and Bludit. SaaS products in the same category include BlogBowl, Blogsitefy and CloudCannon.
Is Hugo actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Hugo was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.167.0, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 90k stars on GitHub.