Bridgetown vs Franklin.jl
Bridgetown
bridgetownrb.comFranklin.jl
franklinjl.orgSide by side
| Figure | Bridgetown | Franklin.jl |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 0 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.0 (#12) | 7.4 (#27) |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Deployment | Static output can be deployed to any server that supports HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; the site recommends Render for full-stack production setups. | Generated site files can be deployed to an existing web server, through GitHub or GitLab, or on services such as Netlify. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The official plugin directory lists integrations and extensions for Directus, Cloudinary, Notion, Plausible Analytics, Sequel, and Lit SSR plus hydration. | The project describes straightforward integration with Literate.jl. |
| License | The Bridgetown source code is licensed under MIT. | The official GitHub repository says Franklin is MIT licensed. |
| Local preview server | Yes | Yes |
| Requirements | Installation requires GCC and Make, Ruby 3.3 or newer, and Node 22.21 or newer. | Installation instructions require Julia 1.3 or later; optional compression and pre-rendering use Python 3 and Node.js. |
| Support | The documentation directs users who need help to Bridgetown community channels, including Discord chat. | The repository recommends the #franklin channel on Julia Slack for usage questions. |
| Supported languages | Ruby,JavaScript | Julia |
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.
Franklin.jl
Franklin.jl has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.