Bridgetown vs Hakyll
Bridgetown
bridgetownrb.comHakyll
jaspervdj.beSide by side
| Figure | Bridgetown | Hakyll |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 0 | 0 |
| Spec score · Static site generators | 8.0 (#12) | 7.5 (#24) |
| Content sources | markdown | markdown |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Incremental builds | Yes | The FAQ says a normal build is incremental, while changes to site.hs require recompiling the configuration and rebuilding. |
| Integrations | The official plugin directory lists integrations and extensions for Directus, Cloudinary, Notion, Plausible Analytics, Sequel, and Lit SSR plus hydration. | The official site describes Pandoc integration and lists utility projects for Agda, Sass, Elm, hyphenation, and converting from other blog engines. |
| License | The Bridgetown source code is licensed under MIT. | Hakyll is available under a BSD license; the maker notes that using Pandoc means site code must use a GPL-compatible license. |
| Local preview server | Yes | The installation guide describes a watch command that builds and previews the site locally at localhost:8000 when the preview server is included. |
| Security | The plugins directory lists a plugin that adds a Content Security Policy in a meta tag. | The project describes static sites as fast, secure, easy to deploy, and manageable using version control. |
| Support | The documentation directs users who need help to Bridgetown community channels, including Discord chat. | The maker points users to a Google discussion group and the #hakyll channel on Libera.Chat for questions. |
| Supported languages | Ruby,JavaScript | Haskell |
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.