Bridgetown vs Eleventy
Bridgetown
bridgetownrb.com
Eleventy
11ty.devSide by side
| Figure | Bridgetown | Eleventy |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.0 (#12) | 8.9 (#2) |
| CMS integration | Yes | Yes |
| Community Support | The project provides community chat and Discord chat options. | The official site links to documentation, Discord, Mastodon, Bluesky, a newsletter, YouTube, and GitHub. |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Founded | 2020 | 2017 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| License | The Bridgetown source code is licensed under MIT. | The official documentation repository is marked as MIT licensed. |
| Multilingual support | Yes | Yes |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Supported languages | Ruby,JavaScript | HTML,Markdown,WebC,JavaScript,Liquid,Nunjucks,Handlebars,Mustache,EJS,Haml,Pug,TypeScript,JSX,MDX,Sass |
| What it does | Bridgetown is a Ruby-powered progressive site generator that compiles content, layouts, and components into a website. | Eleventy is a simpler static site generator that compiles templates into HTML. |
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.
Eleventy
Eleventy is a free static site generator that compiles templates into HTML. It starts with zero configuration and also allows flexible configuration as project needs change. Content can come from Markdown, and templates can use HTML, JavaScript, WebC, Liquid, Nunjucks, Handlebars, Mustache, EJS, Haml, Pug, TypeScript, JSX, MDX, Sass, and custom formats. Eleventy does not require a JavaScript framework and produces zero client-side JavaScript by default. It can fit into an existing directory structure, letting teams convert selected templates rather than an entire site. The tool includes a local preview server, CMS integration, and multilingual support. It requires JavaScript and recommends Node.js version 18 or newer; quick-start commands are provided for macOS, Linux, and Windows, and for npm, pnpm, and Yarn. Its documentation says it probably is not the right tool for single-page applications, given its defaults and full-page navigation. Eleventy supports self-hosted use and is marked MIT licensed. The homepage reports a build time of 1.93 seconds for 4,000 Markdown files.