Assemble vs Bridgetown
Assemble
assemble.io
Bridgetown
bridgetownrb.comSide by side
| Figure | Assemble | Bridgetown |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 7.8 (#17) | 8.0 (#12) |
| CMS integration | No | Yes |
| Community support | The README directs users with questions or suggestions to its Gitter conversation or Twitter account. | The project provides community chat and Discord chat options. |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Incremental builds | No | Yes |
| License | The maker’s Grunt Assemble repository says it is released under the MIT license. | The Bridgetown source code is licensed under MIT. |
| Multilingual support | No | Yes |
| Plugins | The project documentation describes support for Gulp and Base plugins. | Plugins extend Bridgetown projects through gems and configuration initialization, and users can write and publish their own plugins. |
| Local preview server | No | Yes |
| Supported languages | JavaScript,Node.js | Ruby,JavaScript |
| What it does | The project describes Assemble as a command line tool and developer framework for rapid prototyping and static site generation. | Bridgetown is a Ruby-powered progressive site generator that compiles content, layouts, and components into a website. |
Plans
In their own words
Bridgetown
Bridgetown is a free site generator for building static sites, full-stack applications or a combination of both. It compiles Markdown, layouts and components into HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Static publishing features include permalinks, Git-based content deployment, atomic builds, data pipelines and pagination. Collections, taxonomies and content relationships organize material, which can be generated at build time or in real time and connected to a headless CMS or other web APIs. For full-stack applications, its Roda backend supports dynamic routes, server APIs and database connections such as PostgreSQL. Templates can use ERB, Serbea, Streamlined or Liquid; components support modular views, web components and Markdown inclusion. The frontend build system includes esbuild and PostCSS, and custom Ruby plugins can extend builds and content. Static output can be deployed anywhere that serves HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. Bridgetown supports Ruby and JavaScript, and its setup guides cover macOS, Fedora and Ubuntu Linux, and Windows through Windows Subsystem for Linux. Installation requires GCC and Make, Ruby 3.3 or newer, and Node 22.21 or newer.